The Swamp II

The CSU band cheers the brave Buccaneers of Charleston Southern U as they take a half time break. Behind in the game 40 to 3, the second half would get better for the Bucs as they held Florida's second string offense to 22 points.

CSU's band leader takes a half time break as Florida cheerleaders line the field. I had good reason for leaving my DSLR camera at home: fear that history might repeat itself. I lost my first camera long lens years ago at a football stadium when the person next to me knocked the lens onto the concrete at my feet.

I find that shooting pictures in a crowd is difficult to impossible. One of the problems with a small Kodak digital is that crowds are unruly and they love to demolish compositions before trigger fingers can do their job. And another problem is the lack of focal length that could clear the scene.

I asked my neighboring bandsman if he had any idea how much money the Charleston Southern athletic program was bringing to the school by playing big time champ Florida.

He told me that Charleston Southern would receive $450,000. Not bad for a night's work! Even if you have to work on the Sabbath in The Swamp.

The Swamp

We drove to Gainesville last weekend to attend our first University of Florida football game at The Swamp. We skipped the tailgate party scene and took a bus to the game.

It was Saturday, the Sabbath, but there were a few things I didn't expect to find at the game.

This fellow, I'm told, brings his banner to all the games.

And, oh man! I love that tune I was hearing. Had it been that long since I'd been on a college campus? Here in the middle of upstate Florida we came across our first Hare Krishna singers in a long, long time.

As I remember, they used to be younger.

I thought we were going to a football game, not a religious convention. But then I should have figured it out. It was the first game of the year, a warmup game, and national champion Florida was playing Charleston Southern, a small Christian school from South Carolina.

Ah, here's one thing I expected to see: a lot of young people wearing blue and orange.

We got great end zone seats, right next to the Charleston Southern band and cheer squad. They seemed a bit uncomfortable in The Swamp. CSU is a school of about 3,500 students my neighboring bandsman informed me. The University of Florida has about 50,000 students. The Swamp was filling up with Florida fanatics.

90,000 people assembled in The Swamp to watch the University of Florida Gators play a brave Charleston Southern team who actually beat the 63 point spread that Las Vegas gave them.

The Gator Chomp illustrated on the big screen at our end of the field.

Continued in next posting ...