Weekend Notes

A very busy weekend centered on the entire family getting together to watch football. Or at least prepare to watch football.

Friday

M came home Friday afternoon, so we got to hang with her for the second time in two weeks. We sat around catching up while listening to Cathedral’s regular season finale against 6A #10 Warren Central. To complicate matters the Irish were again missing seven starters, including their quarterback. So a sophomore would be getting his first ever varsity start. I figured the running back would get a lot of carries.

Sometimes I know stuff! CHS indeed ran the ball a lot. They had leads of 14–0 and 21–14 before Warren tied things up late in the third quarter. CHS just gave the ball to their RB over-and-over until he finally scored the winning touchdown. He went for 248 yards and three TDs on the night.

The Irish finish the regular season at 5–3, much better than I thought they would be when the calendar turned to September. Now they get a week off before what should be an easy opener to the state tournament.

After football ended all the ladies filtered out of the room. I haven’t watched much of the baseball playoffs, but I turned the NLCS on just in time to see Shohei Ohtani crush a ball that went 469 feet. Turned out he had led the game off with a homer as well. I kept watching as he mowed down the Brewers on the mound. Just for fun Shohei hit another home run as the Dodgers swept the poor Brewers out of the playoffs.

Milwaukee my sentimental pick in the NL this year, but you can’t argue with one of the greatest, if not the greatest, individual performance in playoff history. Plenty of hitters have hit three home runs in a postseason game. Plenty of pitchers have struck out 10 batters in an October game. No one has ever done both. Shohei is just ridiculous.

Saturday

After a couple weeks of prep, IU homecoming was finally here. M and L took off a little after 10 to pick up one of L’s friends then head to Bloomington ahead of us. S and I got on the road about 10:45 and pulled into our primo tailgating spot right at noon. We had her uncle’s tickets, which included a parking pass directly outside the stadium entrance. We set things up and waited for the kids and friends to filter in. M had to go through a whole process to park her car somewhere that it wouldn’t get towed then make it back to her friend she was spending the night with before making it to the stadium.

We got to see a lot of C’s friends. M made a lap of the parking lot with one of her high school buddies and they ran into tons of friends. Even L and her friend had CHS pals swing by. Our little corner of the parking lot was teeming with Indianapolis Catholics. You just can’t get away from them!

Per C’s request, I made a massive vat of chili. The only problem was that, while we were tailgating, it was 80° and breezy, the final day of a very warm, extended summer. That didn’t stop me from downing some of my famous chili, but not as many as our guests partook as we had hoped. We brought a lot home.

This was our first full-on IU tailgating experience, and S has been prepping for weeks. We even bought a fancy battery that would power our two Crock Pots – one with the chili, the other with Buffalo Chicken Dip – for a couple hours. We may have overestimated on food and drinks, but you’d hate to run out, right?

OK, the dumbest thing we did was forget to buy ice on the way down. So I had to walk a few blocks to a little convenience store and grab a bag that I lugged back. I was alternately sweating from the walk and freezing from the parts of my body I had wedge the bag against.

All week we had been watching the forecast carefully. Some point over weekend was going to be the moment when two big fronts brought in storms and wind that blew the heat away and let the autumn chill race in behind them. Earlier in the week it looked like things might be dicey all day. By Friday it seemed like the weather would hold off until late afternoon.

As we were winding down the tailgate and getting ready to head into the stadium, the sky kept getting darker and darker. I checked the radar and there were big storms creeping in from Illinois. But as the crowd packed into the stadium, the cell network basically froze and I couldn’t get updates. Did we have an hour or three? I couldn’t tell.

We made it to our seats midway through the first quarter, just as IU took the lead. Unlike the game against Michigan State we went to four years ago, this time there were no sections of Spartan green scattered through the crowd. The stadium was absolutely packed and nearly everyone was wearing Cream and Crimson.[1] This was my fourth trip to an IU game. As weird as their stadium is in some ways, when it is completely filled it is a really good environment. It is compact, completely closed in, and you are close to the field. It was quite loud.

Just before halftime the sky got even more ominous. S and the girls were there more for the tailgating than the football, so when the game hit the two minute warning, we started to hustle out. So did at least a third of the stadium. By the time we made it out of the concourse, just as IU was scoring, the skies opened up. We said goodbye to M, who was staying in town for the night, piled C and a couple of her friends in with us, and went to her dorm just as the downpour began. We unloaded some leftovers into her fridge, she showed L her room, and we hung out while the worst of the rain passed.

It will normally take about 10 minutes to get from her dorm back onto I–69. Between the rain and so many people leaving the game, it took us a full 45 minutes. And then we drove home in persistent rain, luckily missing the worst of the storms. The game was delayed briefly, but by the time we got home it had just ended, and I caught the Peacock interview with Curt Cignetti.

My assertion that he’s a weirdo was confirmed at the game. We were behind the IU bench and I kept looking for him. Finally I found him. IU had the ball at their own 20. He was standing by himself, 50 yards upfield. What kind of coach does that? As a friend who knew of Cignetti years before me said, “He’s different.”

So a really fun day in B-town. It was a full-family event and until the rain hit, almost a complete success. On the way home I said I think my preference for sports would be to either tailgate or go to the game, not both. Like go to one game and go all out in the parking lot, with tons of food and drink, a big spread for people to roll through, and then listen to the game while packing up and head home before the crowd, then another game show up late, maybe have a drink and snack at someone else’s gathering, then go inside and watch the game.

I must be getting old.

Sunday

What a difference 18 hours makes. I was sweating Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning the windchill was 37°. Our yard was covered in leaves that had blown off in the storms. Our pool cover had as much water on it as it’s had in months, taking nearly two hours for the pump to clear it. Fall has arrived!

We mostly had a lazy day. Two nephews came over and S and I assisted with their homework while their mom got some stuff done. It was pretty humbling that the nine-year-old’s Spanish homework is beyond what I could decipher with my once-decent Spanish. He does go to a Spanish immersion school, but good grief, he’s nine. I told him I could only figure out a few words and he needed to ask mamacita for help later.

M and C had lunch together in B-town before M went back to Cincinnati.

The Colts were back in LA, site of their only loss of the season a few weeks back, this time to play the Chargers. And they pretty much beat that ass. The offense was fully locked in again. The depleted defense was solid until they began to wear down a bit in the second half. Even then, they came up with a huge fourth down stop to ice the game.

The Chargers might be the most injured, least fortunate team in the league, so I’m still not sure how good a win this was. Maybe the Steelers in two weeks will tell us more, but are the Steelers actually any good?

Another sign that the seasons have officially changed? Today is the first day of official girls high school basketball practice in Indiana. L and her teammates have been doing twice-a-week conditioning and scrimmaging before school for six weeks, but today is when they get back on the daily grind again. Their schedule is still a bit in flux, but currently their first game will be November 11.