The makings of a footy fan.

I have finally become a fan of American football.

What began as a day of shopping (Jeremy and Liying's idea of showing Darren and Kaixiang around) ended with a football game that was perhaps the most memorable sports event in a long long time. Or at least among the ones which I've had free admissions to, anyway.

Today, Virginia played Florida State University (FSU), ranked 4th nationally (UVa is unranked on the Top 25 list, after losing to Maryland and Boston College over the last 2 games). Pre-game discussions went a little something like this:

"Dude, we are so going to get raped man."

"I'm not watching the game, man, we are so going to get raped."

"I'm going home and not watching the game, man, we are so going to get raped."

The list goes on.

Anyway, since our dear friends from Penn decided to pop by, we thought we would showcase to them something a lil' unique about UVa (although according to Darren, the abundance of good-looking women already makes UVa distinct from Penn). We headed to Scott Stadium, home of the Virginia Football (that's Americano football) team. Darren and KX didn't pay for admissions because they managed to pass off as a South Korean lass and an Indian girl respectively (I might have the two mixed up). Master of disguises they are, indeed.

We arrived to find our team up 13-10, which is, for lack of a better word, rather surprising. The star quarterback, Marques (pronounced "Marcus") Hagans, was supposedly on form - apparently he either threw or rushed a career high (don't look at me, I don't understand this game either). Anyway, the quarterback is a really important player in American football because he's the player who chucks the ball to the others when you're trying to score, or roughly translated, he's the player whose nuts everyone's after.

So the star quarterback plays a really fantastic game and at one point, we're leading 26-10. This is the point where the audience goes crazy, random Americans start high-fiving me and I'm singing some seriously weird version of "Auld Lang Syne" known as "The Good Ol' Song", a tune they play whenever Virginia scores. You have to understand that such a scoreline is something along the lines of Arsenal leading AC Milan in a Champions League game by 4-0 (i.e. an impossibility, or certainly nigh impossibility).

Reality kicks in as the game goes on and FSU goes on to score about 11 in the 4th quarter, giving them all to play for with at least 5 minutes to go. To cut a long story short, FSU f**ks it up, Virginia makes some interception with a minute to go and kills enough time to win the game. Which is a feat to remember, considering that this is a team that has only beaten a former Top 10 team all of...5 times (or the other way around, I can't remember).

Naturally, this being an occasion to remember, we stormed the field and engulfed the players. That's right, the whole stadium went mad, we dashed onto the ground itself and had a good ol' time watching as people tried desperately to bring down the goal posts. The euphoria of watching your local underdog kicking some serious ass is really a fun feeling, and let's face it, we all want to be football hooligans.

For a more technical analysis of the game, you might want to read this. For more pictures, you'll have to wait for someone to pass me some. But man, storming a football pitch is what it takes to make you a football fan. You should try it sometime.

PS: On a sidenote I spent US$10.48 today purchasing 2 books, which are pretty far apart in their ideological leanings. Michael Moore's "Dude Where's My Country?" covers the left-wing, anti-capitalist vox populi while this autobiography of Jack Welch, former head of GE, is the story of the capitalist hero, or vox money.