sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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On a plane heading from Raleigh to Philly. Thought I would jot down a few thoughts to pass the time on the flight.
Flew American through Philly down. They still use tiny planes to get to Philly that fly into Terminal F and you still have to take that awful bus to get to Terminal B. Was really hoping they would have been addressed by now. Nope. Resolve to never transfer between flights there again.
The weather in NC was great. Except Friday morning when we were golfing and a cell dumped an inch of rain on us in a very wet hour. The sky is really blue and there was rarely a cloud in sight.
Played three terrific golf courses. There are tons of them down here and the rolling hills remind me of CNY. Except we don’t have those really tall, majestic loblolly pine trees.
Saw my first Gila Monster walking on my friends driveway one night at about 9 pm. It was not as monstrous as I imagined.
The tailgate was cool. TexanMark wisely chose the Manning Lot for the event. It was relatively close to the stadium (alas the walk was almost all uphill, like so many stadia). There were tall trees lining the lot and we enjoyed the shade as we drank and ate and tried to figure out how the gall we were going to win.
I ate the middles of a couple of Publix sandwich sections and had a few Hofmann dogs and coneys. No rolls. Delicious. There were a couple of beers on tap from a NC brewery that I am told were very good. Ut was dark anD they used oak spirals to flavor it. Nice people from the brewery too.
Lots of nice people. Always nice to see old friends abs meet new people at these events. If you are thinking about possibly attending one, my advice is to get off your butt and do it.
Ascended Mt Columbia Blue to get to the stadium. On the way saw the Dean Snith Center. It sits off the street and is easy to miss. They have it covered with some awful brown fake stone tiles that look like the crap they used to cover the old department stores downtown in the 1970s except a lot less classy. The tiles have a lot of black hook growing on them and it is unfortunately a real eyesore. Hope they can do something about it soon.
Kenan Stadium has fairly wide concourses. Thought the food selection was decent but nothing special. I think they had BBQ at one place. They had a big Bojangles place that seemed to get most of the business.
Our section (111) was directly in the sun and we broiled like scallops for the first half, until the sun went behind the stadium wall. Not cool UNC.
There were some pretty girls in the student body but ot looked like there was a contest going on for who could find ans wear tie most ugly dress and there were a lot of great contenders. That was weird UNC.
When UNC took the field, the game day people played ‘Jump Around’ and maybe 25% of the students jumped. Not in unison. When I laughed about the sad execution, a chubby UNC fan with a mullet haircut told me it was okay because this was a UNC tradition for basketball that was spreading to football. They did not steal it from Wisconsin. Men with Florence Henderson hair dos should not lie.
The UNC band had 13 tubas. They didn’t really match and mostly spent their time on the playing field attempting to jump rope. Most could not do it. The UNC band did not play the SU fight song but did play the SU alma mater. Though some of the UNC students sang lyrics while it was played indicating they, like us, stole this tune from Cornell.
So UNC stole its light blue color from Columbia. They stole their alma mater from Cornell. Or maybe us. And stole their entrance song from Wisconsin.
Not cool UNC.
Let’s talk quickly about the game experience. They rarely let the band play. Less time for that than any college venue I have ever been to. Instead, they played crappy rap songs all the time at a really high volume. Maybe as high as Purdue. They have two replay scoreboards above the stands in the end zones. They appeared to be slightly bigger than the end zone boards we have but I think the resolution was not as good as ours. They had a bunch of corny contests and threw shirts into the lower deck. They also introduced some retired coaches and talked about their impressive accomplishments. The sound system worked but the sound was crazy loud and I cringed every time it fired up.
The UNC fans were pretty laid back. A little trash talk but not a lot. They seemed sober, which is always nice. It was a sellout but the crowd made little noise and was not a factor in the game.
I think right now UNC is the only football stadium in the ACC with individual seats. They have them down the sidelines but not in the end zones. So the dome will be the only ACC football facility with individual seats throughout.
How did I like my seat? Well, it was more comfortable than an aluminum bench. It had armrests, which I don’t like (but aren’t a big deal). It was made of a thinnish plastic that was slight pliable. Leg room was very tight and I am only 6 feet tall. No way anyone could get past me without me standing and pressing my legs right to the back of the now upright chair. Yes, the chair seats normally are closed and you need to seat down to get your seat down).
There was a seat back that was also bare bones but full sized and it was fine for Jack support. No cup holder. No pad in the seat. That might be different for the chairs near tje 50 yard line. We sat just behind the goal line so I couldn’t tell.
Not sure what the seat width was. It was just wide enough. 18 or 19 inches I think. Probably 19. Other than the hideous color, it was fine.
The game itself was obviously a disappointment. Props to the UNC OC. He had a great game plan. When we played zone, he threw it short and while ballyhooed UNC QB Drake May had a poor day throwing the ball, he was usually able to complete the variety of 5 and 10 yard dink passes UNC used to attack our zone. We were sometimes able to get some pressure on May but he seemed to always be able to sidestep our defenders, who had a bad day tackling.
When we went to press coverage, they dialed up long passes that especially beat our CBs, eho had no help from the safeties. Bellamy got his first start and got a real education on how football works at the ACC level. Hope he learns from it.
Seemed our DL got dominated badly most of the game. Was especially disappointed UNC was able to run most anytime they wanted. We just couldn’t get any penetration. Our ends could not get to the corner. Our CBs did not fly up they way we need them too. And our LBs really struggled to get into position a lot.
It seemed like out defense was shocked by how physical and hard UNC played. They were not ready to play and did not compete like they need to.
Things were even worse in offense. It looked like Coach Beck wanted to establish the run early in the game. Looked like UNC expected it. They overwhelmed our OL and Allen and Shrader usually had nowhere to run. We didin’t make adjustments and continued with this bad strategy for too long.
I get why. Our WRs again looked scared, physically overmatched and not ready to play. Alford set the tone with a pathetic drop the first time Shrader made a throw and it continued from there. Only Hatcher looked like he wanted the ball. Respect to him for playing hard in a tough situation.
Petry and Bradford got blown up badly over and over. Joe Cruz took over at LT in the second half and Enrique moved to RT and that helped things a bit. Joe struggled some but seems more physically able. Guessing we will see the Cruz guys at tackle the rest of the year now.
Garrett made some bad throws, some bad reads and struggled to break free even when he had some daylight. He takes too much time in the pocket too often. I think this is often because our WRs aren’t open but good QBs have a timer in their head that tells him when they need to throw tue ball away. Garrett almost never does this. I believe Drake did it 4 times in the game yesterday alone. This must change.
Props to Stonehouse for his punts and props to Denaberg for good kickoffs. They were the highlight of the game for me.
Flew American through Philly down. They still use tiny planes to get to Philly that fly into Terminal F and you still have to take that awful bus to get to Terminal B. Was really hoping they would have been addressed by now. Nope. Resolve to never transfer between flights there again.
The weather in NC was great. Except Friday morning when we were golfing and a cell dumped an inch of rain on us in a very wet hour. The sky is really blue and there was rarely a cloud in sight.
Played three terrific golf courses. There are tons of them down here and the rolling hills remind me of CNY. Except we don’t have those really tall, majestic loblolly pine trees.
Saw my first Gila Monster walking on my friends driveway one night at about 9 pm. It was not as monstrous as I imagined.
The tailgate was cool. TexanMark wisely chose the Manning Lot for the event. It was relatively close to the stadium (alas the walk was almost all uphill, like so many stadia). There were tall trees lining the lot and we enjoyed the shade as we drank and ate and tried to figure out how the gall we were going to win.
I ate the middles of a couple of Publix sandwich sections and had a few Hofmann dogs and coneys. No rolls. Delicious. There were a couple of beers on tap from a NC brewery that I am told were very good. Ut was dark anD they used oak spirals to flavor it. Nice people from the brewery too.
Lots of nice people. Always nice to see old friends abs meet new people at these events. If you are thinking about possibly attending one, my advice is to get off your butt and do it.
Ascended Mt Columbia Blue to get to the stadium. On the way saw the Dean Snith Center. It sits off the street and is easy to miss. They have it covered with some awful brown fake stone tiles that look like the crap they used to cover the old department stores downtown in the 1970s except a lot less classy. The tiles have a lot of black hook growing on them and it is unfortunately a real eyesore. Hope they can do something about it soon.
Kenan Stadium has fairly wide concourses. Thought the food selection was decent but nothing special. I think they had BBQ at one place. They had a big Bojangles place that seemed to get most of the business.
Our section (111) was directly in the sun and we broiled like scallops for the first half, until the sun went behind the stadium wall. Not cool UNC.
There were some pretty girls in the student body but ot looked like there was a contest going on for who could find ans wear tie most ugly dress and there were a lot of great contenders. That was weird UNC.
When UNC took the field, the game day people played ‘Jump Around’ and maybe 25% of the students jumped. Not in unison. When I laughed about the sad execution, a chubby UNC fan with a mullet haircut told me it was okay because this was a UNC tradition for basketball that was spreading to football. They did not steal it from Wisconsin. Men with Florence Henderson hair dos should not lie.
The UNC band had 13 tubas. They didn’t really match and mostly spent their time on the playing field attempting to jump rope. Most could not do it. The UNC band did not play the SU fight song but did play the SU alma mater. Though some of the UNC students sang lyrics while it was played indicating they, like us, stole this tune from Cornell.
So UNC stole its light blue color from Columbia. They stole their alma mater from Cornell. Or maybe us. And stole their entrance song from Wisconsin.
Not cool UNC.
Let’s talk quickly about the game experience. They rarely let the band play. Less time for that than any college venue I have ever been to. Instead, they played crappy rap songs all the time at a really high volume. Maybe as high as Purdue. They have two replay scoreboards above the stands in the end zones. They appeared to be slightly bigger than the end zone boards we have but I think the resolution was not as good as ours. They had a bunch of corny contests and threw shirts into the lower deck. They also introduced some retired coaches and talked about their impressive accomplishments. The sound system worked but the sound was crazy loud and I cringed every time it fired up.
The UNC fans were pretty laid back. A little trash talk but not a lot. They seemed sober, which is always nice. It was a sellout but the crowd made little noise and was not a factor in the game.
I think right now UNC is the only football stadium in the ACC with individual seats. They have them down the sidelines but not in the end zones. So the dome will be the only ACC football facility with individual seats throughout.
How did I like my seat? Well, it was more comfortable than an aluminum bench. It had armrests, which I don’t like (but aren’t a big deal). It was made of a thinnish plastic that was slight pliable. Leg room was very tight and I am only 6 feet tall. No way anyone could get past me without me standing and pressing my legs right to the back of the now upright chair. Yes, the chair seats normally are closed and you need to seat down to get your seat down).
There was a seat back that was also bare bones but full sized and it was fine for Jack support. No cup holder. No pad in the seat. That might be different for the chairs near tje 50 yard line. We sat just behind the goal line so I couldn’t tell.
Not sure what the seat width was. It was just wide enough. 18 or 19 inches I think. Probably 19. Other than the hideous color, it was fine.
The game itself was obviously a disappointment. Props to the UNC OC. He had a great game plan. When we played zone, he threw it short and while ballyhooed UNC QB Drake May had a poor day throwing the ball, he was usually able to complete the variety of 5 and 10 yard dink passes UNC used to attack our zone. We were sometimes able to get some pressure on May but he seemed to always be able to sidestep our defenders, who had a bad day tackling.
When we went to press coverage, they dialed up long passes that especially beat our CBs, eho had no help from the safeties. Bellamy got his first start and got a real education on how football works at the ACC level. Hope he learns from it.
Seemed our DL got dominated badly most of the game. Was especially disappointed UNC was able to run most anytime they wanted. We just couldn’t get any penetration. Our ends could not get to the corner. Our CBs did not fly up they way we need them too. And our LBs really struggled to get into position a lot.
It seemed like out defense was shocked by how physical and hard UNC played. They were not ready to play and did not compete like they need to.
Things were even worse in offense. It looked like Coach Beck wanted to establish the run early in the game. Looked like UNC expected it. They overwhelmed our OL and Allen and Shrader usually had nowhere to run. We didin’t make adjustments and continued with this bad strategy for too long.
I get why. Our WRs again looked scared, physically overmatched and not ready to play. Alford set the tone with a pathetic drop the first time Shrader made a throw and it continued from there. Only Hatcher looked like he wanted the ball. Respect to him for playing hard in a tough situation.
Petry and Bradford got blown up badly over and over. Joe Cruz took over at LT in the second half and Enrique moved to RT and that helped things a bit. Joe struggled some but seems more physically able. Guessing we will see the Cruz guys at tackle the rest of the year now.
Garrett made some bad throws, some bad reads and struggled to break free even when he had some daylight. He takes too much time in the pocket too often. I think this is often because our WRs aren’t open but good QBs have a timer in their head that tells him when they need to throw tue ball away. Garrett almost never does this. I believe Drake did it 4 times in the game yesterday alone. This must change.
Props to Stonehouse for his punts and props to Denaberg for good kickoffs. They were the highlight of the game for me.
