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Published: November 23rd 2020
Central Florida—land of palm trees, cool breezes, and 5 short rainstorms every afternoon. Also home to the most theme parks in the world. On Saturday, I saw several palm trees, enjoyed the cool breezes, and only endured 2 of those rainstorms. And my faithful readers will be happy to know that I successfully avoided all the theme parks. In these Covid times, only one thing gets me to travel: college football. Yeah, I know I’m weird. But as long as it’s outdoors, and I’ve got my mask, and other people are being at least somewhat responsible with distancing and mask-wearing, I don’t feel too bad.
But boy, has the 2020 college football season been weird. Tell me something I don’t know, right? All the prognosticators are saying that if a team from a lower conference has a chance to make the playoffs, this year might be their best bet. With that in mind, I decided to check out the highest-ranked team from one of those lesser conferences—the 7th-ranked Cincinnati Bearcats. But I didn’t go anywhere near Ohio. In fact, I drove in the opposite direction. How 2020 of me!
Let’s back up a bit. My parents’ 50
th wedding anniversary
was also this weekend, which meant that I needed to be in south Georgia for a few days. (Don’t cuss at me for disregarding CDC guidelines about Thanksgiving get-togethers. The anniversary party, which I completely planned and subsidized by my lonesome, had a total of 4 guests: my parents, my brother, and myself. They’re all still planning an extended-family gathering on Thanksgiving day, however, which I will NOT be attending.) Covid safety aside, it meant that travel to Florida was going to be my best option. And even though it’s 2020, I can still count on fate or karma working out to help plan my football sojourns, when I choose to journey out for the sake of anthropological research. Speaking of…
The University of Central Florida and the University of Cincinnati are both part of the American Athletic Conference, the AAC. It’s the best caliber of the lower conferences, and you can tell how much it chafes the entire conference to be lumped in with the “lesser” conferences. One of their conference logos is “American Power” with “Power” stylized with a 6 in place of the E—“AMERICAN POW6R”—because they want to be viewed as the 6th major conference with
the so-called Power 5, instead of the top of the heap in the Group of 5. No team from the Group of 5 has never played in the Playoff, despite UCF going undefeated in both 2017 and 2018, beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl at the end of 2017. They did finally lose to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl at the end of 2018. This season hasn’t been so glorious for them, having already lost 2 games and being unranked when I chose to visit.
UCF declared themselves the 2017 National Champions in football, despite not playing in the actual National Championship game. Such is normal in the Trump era, as this kind of behavior sadly comes from the very top these days. The alternative-fact 2017 national championship is something that the university is proud of; it’s not only emblazoned on t-shirts and bumper stickers—they put it up in huge letters across the press box in their stadium. Which is called the Bounce House, because why not?
In some ways, I admire UCF for their boldness. But nobody—and I do mean NOBODY—outside of the UCF fan base even acknowledges their claim on the 2017 National Championship. At least
not without a little eye roll or some air quotes or a pretty overtly sarcastic tone of voice. I wonder how many UCF fans actually believe it. I imagine teams, at least the good teams, that come to play at the Bounce House enjoy a good laugh when they see that huge proclamation with absolutely no basis in reality. And that’s what I got on Saturday night: a good team playing against the UCF Knights in the Bounce House.
Before I drag the UCF football fan base any further, I’ll admit that I had a fun time in the Bounce House. Getting there, however, felt dreadful for the most part.
I stayed at my parents’ house on Friday night, because free hotel basically. And I hadn’t seen them in over three months, because Covid basically. Their house is about halfway between mine and Orlando, the home of the UCF Knights. The game wasn’t until 3:30, so it truly was a perfect time for making this a day trip from south Georgia. I left around 8:15, and I swear it felt like karma was against me before I even left town: I couldn’t pay at the pump for gas,
then the traffic light outside the gas station decided it wasn’t going to let me turn (so I ran it, sorry not sorry), and then I got stuck waiting for a train. I know, I know, first-world problems. But as anyone can attest, having all that anxiety before you even leave town can ruin a trip’s mojo.
I got to Orlando around 12:30 PM, just in time for lunch. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but finding local eateries in Orlando, a place renowned for its chain-friendliness, was a challenge. Around the UCF campus, this was especially true. I have a general feeling that Florida is all about making people from outside the state want to stay longer; it’s all about the tourism bucks, and chain restaurants are a known quantity for outsiders. I at least went for a chain that, as far as I can tell, only operates in Florida: Keke’s Breakfast Café.
Keke’s is literally across the street from the UCF campus. I had checked out their menu before leaving home, and I saw pumpkin pancakes being advertised on their website. Yes, please! So when they seated me, and I saw a little placard on
the table with pictures of those pumpkin pancakes, I said I didn’t even need a menu. I pointed and said, “Those, please.” My waitress was happy to keep it that simple. The home fries and bacon were the perfect complements, though my only regret is that I should’ve only ordered a single pancake. They were huge! But I ordered two, unaccustomed to the normal Keke’s portions.
In a booth across from me, a guy and a girl in their mid-20s and obnoxiously pretentious—is that possible?—were having a conversation loaded with the f-word, even with kids at booths easily within earshot. And the subject of their conversation? Recalling their favorite times when they got blackout drunk! Because of course, life goals. One snippet I heard, and I swear to goddess this is completely accurate because I wrote it down when I heard it: “And then that’s when I blacked out in my tub.” Followed by raucous laughter. That was her punchline?! Ah, to be young and impressed with teenage liver damage.
After I stuffed myself with my pumpkin pancakes, I went back to my car, bought the cheapest game ticket I could find, then drove to the parking lot
near the stadium. Yes, another week of waiting to the last minute to buy a ticket. But I had already decided I was going; I was just waiting for prices to decrease to their minimum. And wouldn’t you know it? Another damn issue with the ticket-buying process. Long story short: the transaction went through, and I had to click on an email for Ticketmaster to transfer the tickets to my account, but I kept getting an error message; after 30 minutes on the phone and 4 emails with the UCF ticketmaster people, not to mention 20 percent of my phone battery, it turns out my VPN was at fault. Ticketmaster doesn’t like VPNs, so learn from my mistake and turn it off when you click on their website.
Most of the UCF campus was deserted; a couple of families and maybe two groups of 4 or 5 friends was all I saw until I headed to the stadium. It was spooky, because UCF is one of the largest universities, student-wise, in the world: over 69,000. It also has a very deliberate and efficient layout. Jack and I visited over spring break in 2019, so I won’t say anything more
about it here. I only got to spend about an hour there anyway, 30 minutes of which was on a frustrated phone call about the tickets (turning into a weekly thing!).
But everything on the UCF main campus is easy to find and not particularly far apart. It was less than ten minutes from the center of campus to the stadium on foot. As I got back to my parking lot—free to park, by the way—the fans became more numerous. UCF’s main color is gold, but they had advertised that fans should wear black for this game, their final home game of the season. I was concerned about this choice, since Cincinnati, the opponent, has black as their primary color. I needn’t have worried, though, since most of the Cincy people were wearing red. I will say, though, that a large percentage of them were wearing red with Ohio State stuff on it. It made me wonder whether these Cincy fans were more like bandwagon fans who were hopping up for this season since Cincinnati was doing better than expected. The ones I saw up close, for sure, were a bit obnoxious, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they
went back to being just Ohio State fans after this season again.
As far as the Bounce House goes, it’s quite intimate. It only holds 44,000 fans, and this year it’s been reduced to 25 percent capacity. The stadium was divided into zones, and you couldn’t move between zones. You had to go into the gates listed on your ticket (more hands-free scanners, like I saw at Georgia Tech on Halloween), and they’ve got each zone blocked off around the concourse and inside the seating areas. But there are no assigned seats within the zones, so first come, first served. They do have yellow tape on the bleachers to indicate where NOT to sit, though a good number of people ignored it. While we were still waiting for the game to begin, it generally wasn’t a problem. But throughout the game, I had numerous people in the vicinity making me uncomfortable, and not just from their disregard for the seating arrangements. I will NEVER understand how people are willing to play games with their health around so many strangers. And the ushers all had handheld signs reminding about spacing and masks.
As the game was starting, a gaggle
of Cincy frat guys strode into our section and took up 3 or 4 rows, not minding the yellow tape or keeping face masks in proper positions. Five minutes later, the stadium police came by and kindly escorted all 25 of them to another section. Apparently, some of the UCF people had complained.
Also, in another 2020 moment, I saw several squirrels inside the stadium before the game began. Because, where else would wildlife be but inside a stadium that isn’t as congested as normal?
Despite all the restrictions for fans, including the generally small size of the stadium, the people certainly knew how to make some noise. And how to jump. I think the whole Bounce House is a thing they take literally. Pre-game, during big plays by the Cincinnati team, and at various other times, people jumped up and down quite vigorously. Sometimes it got so bad that the video on the big screen was shaking from all the jumping.
But what about the game? I saw that Cincinnati was favored by 5 or 6 points, but the computers were going with UCF for a slight advantage. That has all the makings of a great
game. For the first 8 minutes, though, it was all UCF. They jumped out with a 14-3 lead halfway through the first quarter, one of those scores thanks to a fumbled punt by Cincy. But then it became a defensive struggle for the rest of the quarter. All the damn penalties certainly didn’t help the home team. Cincy then rattled off a touchdown, a field goal, and another touchdown as UCF just watched. They missed the 2-point conversion on the second TD, and then UCF scored a field goal just before the half, so the score was Cincy on top 19-17 when we went in for halftime. Definitely a good game.
Cincy started the second half with a field goal, then UCF scored a touchdown and went for 2 (and made it), so the end of the third quarter had seen another lead change and another bizarre score: UCF leading 25-22. But then Cincy did their thing again, scoring 2 more touchdowns to go up by 11. Then UCF had a crazy drive capped off with a touchdown and then a ridiculous 2-point conversion (seriously, this game could be called the 2-Point Conversion Game) that looked like it was
stopped but then there he was, crossing the goal line. Quite a few plays like that, where a guy was just in the right place, and the ball ricocheted at just the right angle. UCF was now only down by 3, and there were still 4.5 minutes left in the game. So UCF kicked it away instead of trying the onside kick, and Cincy did what they had done to start the half: make a long drive down the field and bleed the clock. But through some kind of witchcraft (Cincy would probably say it was designed to not score despite getting down to the 1-yard line and choosing not to score in order to run out the clock), Cincy’s quarterback got a bad snap on 4
th down and just fell on the ball as time expired. Or so they thought. After review, there was still actually ONE SECOND left on the clock. So UCF got the ball and stupidly tried to do some lateral shenanigans, but they didn’t even get 10 yards down the field before Cincy tackled the ball carrier and sent everybody home.
FINAL SCORE: CINCINNATI 36, CENTRAL FLORIDA 33.
I really do like being at
a game where I don’t have to care about the outcome. I just want a good, close game, where nobody knows who will win until time runs out. Or uncertainty as close to the end of the game as possible. Most of the games I’ve picked all season have been like that, and once again, I can say that I got my money’s worth.
The one new snag for this game that I hadn’t experience this year, though, was post-game traffic. How hellish was that?! It took 30 minutes to get to the main road, after which I was good to go. And I can’t end a blog post about Orlando without thanking them for their wonderful turnpike system! Always glad to donate $20 or more just for the privilege of seeing the area. That’s sarcasm, people.
P.S. I got home from the game, and before I could go to bed, my phone showed a news story about UCF researchers: they had created a “super spreader profile” for Covid. To no one’s surprise, the most common super spreader is an asymptomatic young man. Totally didn’t see any of those in Orlando. Not a single one. Once again, that’s
sarcasm, people.
*No Knights died during my time in Orlando, though UCF’s hopes at relevance in 2020 sure did.
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Erica
non-member comment
If you had to sum up this year's football season in just a few sentences, what would you have to say about it? What things have you seen/ done at games this year that you hope will be implemented at games in 2022?