If you are any kind of college football fan, you know the University of Kentucky hired a new football coach. His name is Mark Stoops. He was the defensive coordinator at Florida State and his brother is Bob Stoops the coach at Oklahoma. He'd gotten quite a bit of buzz around the football program (which is always seemingly playing a back seat to basketball). 50,000 people showed up for the spring football scrimmage. He brought in some key recruits for this year and his 2014 class is among the top in the nation. UK's first game of the year would be against Western Kentucky at LP Field in Nashville. Jonathan and I went to this game in 2011 and it's wasn't that great. I bought three tickets this year (for Jonathan, Josh and I). Western beat UK at home last year and with the new coach and the revenge factor, I thought UK had a good chance to win.
I picked up Jonathan at his apartment on Saturday and we headed down to Nasvhille. Josh was driving from Lexington to meet us there. I met my sister Jody at her bank to do some estate business. Her bank is actually open with lobby service on Saturday til 1pm. The transaction went smoothly and we were able to chat for a few minutes. Josh was running into traffic issues coming down on I-65 south (never did find out what the issue was). We had decided to do Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster. I had picked out the one in Mt Juliet (since it was closest to our hotel on Donelson Pike). Jody said it was a very nice Red Lobster so Jonathan and I headed there.
We got there and it was very nice. It wasn't packed at all. Josh had to meet us there late because of the traffic. Our waiter was great. It was the first Endless Shrimp that I ever remember that they brought out servings so fast we had to finally stop them. We did have a funny incident. We were discussing the Jets QB situation and mentioned Matt Simms. Two elderly ladies were seated close to us and one said "He played for Tennessee you know and he's Phil Simms son". Then as she was leaving she said "If you'd been talking about Vince Young, I'd have something to say about that too". I told her we'd talked about him earlier (which we had).
We checked into our hotel - Hampton Inn and Suites by the Airport. I had gotten a really good price on a suite. We were able to rest a bit before the game. We left about 1.5 hours before it started. I had a parking pass for the A lot at LP field. The pass said you had to loop around the city and actually enter from the North. Well, about the time we got to I-24, there was a monstrous traffic jam. It took us 1.5 hours to go 1.5 miles. The traffic control was hideous. There were not nearly as many people here as would be a Titans game (37k was the announced attendance). I guess if you go to a Titans game, you have to get there the night before. As we got close to the parking lot, two police cars with their lights on pulled in behind me. I thought "what in the world?". Turned out they were blocking in what looked like a trash truck. More cars arrived and they approached the truck with their weapons drawn. I have no earthly idea what was going on there. It got later, so I had the boys just jump out and head to the stadium. I finally got into the lot about 6. There were big lines at the gates since they have to "wand" everybody. I managed to get in my seat just as the game was starting though (it didn't kick off til 6:15pm).
I might as well have been late though. Western just pretty much dominated KY. The big strength of KY was supposed to be their defensive line. The WKU offensive line opened big holes and even when KY attempted to tackle the runner, he picked up extra yards. There was a lot of arm tackling and no wrapping up. When KY got the ball, I looked forward to the new "Air Raid Offense". Well, it looked like last year's offense. They ran the ball a lot even on 3rd and long situations. They did get some long runs and with the help of two WKU turnovers, Kentucky was only down 21-17 at the half and would get the ball to start the 2nd half. They did nothing on their first two drives and then WKU scored two TDs to go up 35-17. Since Josh was driving back that night, we left at the start of the 4th. We were able to get back to our hotel in 10 minutes. UK managed to get within 35-26 but the score was much closer than the game actually was. I'll be interested to see how WKU does against Tennessee next week to give some indication of how UK will do the rest of the year. Based on what I saw, they'll be lucky to win two games and they'll go winless in the SEC again.
Once we actually got into the stadium, the club seats were nice. We had a good view and being able to go into the "club" area and cool off was nice. The lines are shorter at the concession stands and bathrooms there. The LP field concessions have added something new. For 9.00 you get a "souvenir" cup that they will refill multiple times for you at any concession stand there during that game. We got multiple refills and I even got one as I left. Josh headed for Lexington made it fine. Jonathan and I got up the next morning and enjoyed worshipping at Lebanon Road church of Christ and hearing our friend Adam Faughn preach. We stopped and got Zaxby's in Clarksville and made it home just fine.
The game did temper expectations severely and it was like "running into a brick wall". The boys and I did have a good time together and that was the main thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment