Soccer and Football

With our heavily subsidized tickets (courtesy of OSU ticket office) in hand we headed off down Hudson Street for the short walk to Crew stadium. We didn't really find a pedestrian entrance as such, so just followed the cars in. Our $5 food vouchers were burning a bit of a hole in our pockets, so we checked out our options. I went for the $5 bratwurst and K for the $7 individual pizza. Just how long the cooked pizza had been in the box was another question. With our food in hand we took a while to check out the merchandise on offer. We didn't stay long. $30 for a scarf seems a little hopeful... it almost makes the $70 for a replica shirt seem reasonable, or maybe not. We found our seats and we were in the Nordecke. This seems to have been the area of the stadium assigned for the Crew fans that like to sing, bang drums, wave flags and generally have a good go at creating some sort of atmosphere.

As Toronto were the opposition, we had the pleasure of both the Canadian and the US anthems before kick-off. Columbus were coming in to the game off the back of a 6-2 thumping courtesy of Seattle but were top of the eastern conference, Toronto on the other hand were bottom, so surely should have been a home win. 2-0 down at half time didn't bode all that well and it took until the 67th minute for the Crew to get on the board.

The goal brought about a shower of gold and black streamers and hope of getting something out of the game. That hope was short lived as Toronto took advantage of some very charitable defending to go two goals ahead. It finished 4-2 and Toronto won in Columbus for the first time in their history, which would be more impressive if they hadn't come into existence in 2006!

On getting home, it seemed a good idea to sample a slightly larger yellow atmosphere as Michigan welcomed Notre Dame on TV. College football is pretty amazing. It was Michigan's first night game and resulted in the largest crowd to ever watch a college football game. That'd be 114,804 (all numbers and commas correct). These highlights are just under 4 minutes long; you should really watch them. We only saw the last 1/4, but with the winning touch down coming in the last 3 seconds, the game was beyond believable.