Our seats at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium are on the 50-yard line, way up in the UPS Flight Deck. If you like the nuances of the game, the Xs and Os, seeing pass patterns as they develop, they’re great seats. There’s also a wonderful vista, with a view of the city from Iroquois Park to downtown’s office buildings. Churchill Downs’ twin spires and the still developing U of L academic campus are close.
Our group has a dozen or more seats together. My son Josh joined Paula and I yesterday as the Cardinals took care of business against N.C. State. In our section, the fans follow the game, and when things don’t go well for the home team, there’s grumbling. When this older fella didn’t like a play call yesterday, he got up and kind of lost it, bursting forth with a string of obscenities directed at either the officials or Bobby Petrino, I’m not sure.
This guy wasn’t drunk. He wore a baseball cap and a red shirt, and I really think he just got carried away. But his outburst inspired a young man, sitting about five seats away, to stand up (with his young son in tow) and scream back at him. “Calm down will you? They can’t hear you!”
It was a good line. Yelling anything from the upper deck, and thinking it might affect the judgement of an official, is insane. The guy in the cap was pretty quiet the rest of the way. The Cards made a few more mistakes, but never relinquished the lead, and everyone went home happy.
Paula doesn’t understand why we always have to stay until the end of the game. I don’t have a good answer for her, because it’s something that Mark, my best pal, and I have been doing since watching some awful football games at Western. As the 4th quarter winds down, she starts looking at me, making comments like, “Well, it looks like we’ve got this one.” I nod, as she takes note of all the people leaving. I’m not interested in getting a jump on traffic, and I like hearing the final horn sound.
LUKE:
