“Tickets, I got tickets,” the black man, dressed in head to toe in Fubu, was yelling attempting to get rid of his last tickets before the game started.
“How much for two tickets,” I asked the guy since Jesse and I got separated from Dale at the tailgate, whom had both of our student tickets.
“$80 for the both of them, you’ll have the best view in the house.”
“Bullshit, Ill give you $20.”
“Then no deal kid, you can go find tickets somewhere else.”
“Alright sounds good,” I bluffed, hoping that he would bite as we walked away.
A few steps away we heard the man yell, “ Alright, $40 but that’s as low as I’ll go.”
Bingo, we were in. As I reached into my wallet, the man started preaching to us about how he wasn’t making any money off of us. Yeah right. I handed him the cash, and Jess and I proceeded to walk into Gerald R. Ford Stadium to watch the Frogs tear apart the Ponies.
After we made our stop at the concession stand we decided to check out our seats before attempting to find our friends. Section 121, row BB, seats 4 and 5; The ‘best view in the house’ ended up giving us the chance of having bloody noses. As we hiked the un-even stairs up to the top of the stadium, we spotted a few of our friends and convinced them to come sit with us at our seats where there were plenty of open ones.
We sat down with five minutes left in the first quarter, finding ourselves to be trailing 7-0. We looked around and figured the coast was clear to open up our personal bar in row BB. We poured out the top of our fountain drinks, and made room for a substitute liquid. We all grabbed the flasks that we had hid in our boots, and made our drinks.
An hour and a few drinks later, halftime had appeared and the Horned Frog Band stormed the field to do their routine songs. Our friends that had joined us, Kyle and Griffin, wanted to go look for Dale because he was with some girls from his Colorado hometown. Not having anything else to do, Jess and I decided to join them.
We all met Dale and his two girlfriends at the stairs above the SMU student section, where the girls convinced us to go sit with them. We walked down the stairs, through the sea of red, and found ourselves six rows from the field. At the bottom of the stairs stood a cop that was seemed to really be eyeing us down. Ignoring him, we got ready for the game to start back up.
The third quarter started and all was going well, especially since Andy Dalton started strong, scoring a quick touchdowns. It was a lot of fun, especially since Jess and I met a couple of cute SMU girls who were sitting in front of us. As the game went on, we started to pull away more and more from the Mustangs, and Jess and I found ourselves getting closer and closer to getting these girls to go out with us after the game.
At the end of the third quarter, Dalton ran into the corner of the end zone right next to us to put us even further ahead. As my friends and I started giving high-fives, and cheering a little bit, an annoying SMU kid started yelling at us from a few rows down.
“Screw the Horned-Frogs, y’all blow.”
In retaliation, Kyle taunted back at him “scoreboard!”
Before we knew it the kid started chanting and us, and his friends followed, “Douche bags! Douche bags! Douche bags!”
As they continued to chant, so did the rest of the student section. Standing in shock, and a little embarrassed, I stood on my seat. While looking around, listening to the chants coming at us, all that caught my eye was Kyle standing on his seat with a huge smile on his face, as he was lifting both of his hands to the sky, with a notorious finger standing on top of both of them.
Coming back to reality I turned my head back at the kid who started the entire situation. However, before I could lock my eyes on him, I had to duck from the Miller Light can the he hurled at us. Luckily I saw it in time to duck, too bad for the SMU girl standing behind me who didn’t. She got caught in the crossfire and to a beer can to the side of her head.
I looked back at the kid, and he was gone. A little confused, I started to look around for him. I found him, but after he found me. He shoved my left side and left arm, causing me to bump into Jess. I stormed back towards him, shoving him onto the ground of the row across the stairs.
Before anything else happened, Dale grabbed me and forced me up the stairs.
“There’s no way you can win this Hunter, we’re surrounded by all SMU kids. Five kids in purple surrounded by a few thousand in red.”
As I lead all of us up the stairs, someone grabbed me from behind. Before I could turn around, this mystery person gave me a new pair of shiny bracelets. I turned around to find the cop, from the bottom of the stairs, holding the handcuffs and forcing me to go up the stairs.
I couldn’t believe it, “did you not see him push me first?” Completely ignoring what I asked, he decided to ask me a question.
“Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?” and from that point on, I knew there was nothing I could do.
He took me into a room at the top of the stairs where I joined some other kids in purple. Imagine that. Shortly after they sat me down, the door opened and Dale walked in, with his own pair of bracelets. The little window in the door revealed our friends standing there laughing, making us feel even dumber. We sat there in the 10x10 room until we were handed our tickets, and escorted out of the stadium.
“That’ll be the last time I go to this rivalry game at SMU, I’m so pissed,” I told Dale as we stumbled back to my car across the dark campus. “Not as pissed as my dads going to be though.”
