A warm and sunny afternoon in the Rose Bowl! Nice to be home at 4:30 instead of midnight.
Noticeably different crowd today compared to Wisconsin last week.
First, my guess is that attendance was down a bit from last week. If we had 35,000 in the Bowl for Wisconsin, my guess is that we had 34,000 for this game. The north end of the Bowl is where a lot of the student comp tickets go, and it was only half full today vs. mostly full for Wisconsin. The high northeast corner of the Bowl was populated for Wisconsin, if not exactly full. It was basically empty today. It felt like the difference was in attendance by MSU fans. I sit at tunnel 4 (40 yard line on the sunny side - no complaints there), and the number of MSU fans near us was noticeably smaller than the number of Wisconsin fans near us last week.
I'm not exactly scoffing at 34,000 fannies in the seats. I am a little surprised that the Bowl wasn't more full for the nation's No. 9 team, a team that is undefeated and has a pretty nice path to CFP consideration, on a genuinely gorgeous SoCal fall afternoon. Alas, 'twas not to be today.
The other real difference I noticed was the lack of passion this week as compared to last on both sides. There were no fights at the Wisconsin game, and true abuse was restricted to the verbal kind directed at the refs and, occasionally, a Wisconsin player who drew a foul. It was just kind of quiet today. It kind of felt like the MSU fans expected to lose and the UCLA fans expected to win. The MSU fans were clearly pleased at the end of the first half (they stood and applauded their team into the tunnel at halftime, while UCLA fans on the sunny side of the Bowl sat on their hands). But they were only pleased, not wild. The sunny side of the Bowl erupted in a proper sort of way for the Bruins during that 3rd quarter, but otherwise was quiet. The crowd appreciated each of the two MSU fouls during that ultimately unsuccessful drive in the 4th quarter, but their appreciation lacked a bit of true sincerity.
It'll be interesting to see how full the Bowl is for Nevada and how loud anyone is.....
SEVEN AND O.