NFL week 2. Kansas State Wildcats at UCLA Bruins

We pulled the Mullet into the Rose Bowl stadium car park, which sits perfectly amongst the Californian mountains.

NFL week 2. Kansas State Wildcats at UCLA Bruins. Rose Bowl. 19th September 2009.

By Adam Goldstein

Kansas State 9-23 UCLA

We pulled the Mullet into the Rose Bowl stadium car park, which sits perfectly amongst the Californian mountains. The Rose Bowl is in Pasadena which is 35 miles from the actual UCLA University. This maybe why only 67,311 fans went into the stadium when the capacity is 91,136. Though thousands of people turned up just to tailgate.

The area surrounding the stadium is beautiful, with flowing lawns, trees and majestic golf courses. In fact many of the car parks for the stadium are on the golf course and soccer fields, which means tailgating on grass, which is a luxury compared with the black top asphalt.

Our bus was in the R.V wood chipped lot, quite far away from the car owned tailgaters. We were amongst Kansas State and UCLA fans and everyone had their grills on. The R.V lot wasn’t particularly busy, so I checked out the car tailgating lot. This was on grass and everyone had their tents up, and it was like a festival. Cars were playing loud music, young children and dogs were running around, it was like a massive picnic.

Like last week at the Washington Husky game, I found the demographic was either young students or much older alumni. I passed the alumni band who played an excellent jazzy set and then they marched throughout the tailgate lawn. I then found the student marching band, they were not as friendly as their older counterparts and they told me they are not even ready to play the half time show as of yet.

I came by some students who were holding beer cans that had been taped on top of each other with coloured tape. I enquired as to what this ritual was about. The young fans told me that this is called their “Wizard staff”. For every can of beer you drink, you tape each can on top of the last. When the staff reaches your height, you stop adding cans because the “wizard staff” has now reached your “wizard height”. Though the drinking doesn’t stop there, you just create another staff!

It was here that the UCLA have organized food sellers, but you could not use cash to buy the food. You had to buy tokens to then buy the food, which I thought was odd. Then again with so many friendly tailgaters around, I wonder if anyone buys any food?

My next stop was the gift shop. It was a huge tent that was packed with fans, despite it being 5 hours before kick off. The lady in the shop showed me what she thought is the most “ridiculous” piece of UCLA merchandise, and it was indeed ridiculous. It was a soft foam UCLA foam helmet. A piece of memorabilia that I have never seen before for any team.

I was getting hungry so I headed back to the Mullet. Jay had his tailgate usual on the grill: Buffalo Chicken dip, and the UCLA fans next to use provided me with cheeseburgers, Chinese chicken salad, macaroni cheese, camembert, chicken sausages and to top it off, they had their on UCLA brand of mustard with them.

It was then my first attempt at cooking British food on the trip. I popped British pork sausages on the grill and made some mash potato (from a packet). I then fried up some onions, added some spring onion and chive before pouring on the Bisto gravy. The “Bangers and Mash” looked good even if I do say so myself. Several fans came over to try it out and they all loved it! I was a little nervous that people would not like the food, as it is very hearty meal. More of a winter dish, than a summer tailgate finger food. Jay then made up some blue cheese sliders with hard cheese on top. We added my English mustard to the mix and they went very quickly.

It was soon game time. Tickets on the East and West parts of the stadium were selling for $36, whilst the north and south stands in general admission, (which I assume you sit where there is space,) were selling for $19. Thankfully someone from our party actually had a spare ticket worth $75 and it gloriously found itself in the palm of my hand very quickly!

The Rose bowl is immense with a lot of room on the concourse. It is built like an actual bowl, with a shallow gradient, much like Lambeau Field. There was no beer in the stadium, because it is a college game even though the stadium is way off campus. We walked down the tunnel, to the terrace, which is really long, and I almost felt like I was walking out of the player’s tunnel on the field. We sat next to an older couple and their grown up children who all went to Kansas State. There is small section for the away fans. You can spot it easily by the block colour of purple in the stadium. The away fans were not “cut off” by railings or police like you would see at soccer games in the U.K.

I noticed a distant lack of “extreme fans” like you might see at NFL games, but the stadium was just as loud. The UCLA band played throughout, and they did a great version of A-Ha’s classic 80s number, “Take on me”. The two Bruin bear mascots earned their monies by getting everyone involved.

When UCLA were on defense the stadium was particularly loud. The UCLA “Spirit Squad” had their own “Yell Crew” who screamed into large, classic looking American megaphones, and held signs to inspire more noise. They also orchestrated the famous UCLA 8-clap fight chant. The cheerleaders were incredibly acrobatic and seemed addicted to doing back flips, standing on top of one another and making human pyramids.

The away team brought their own cheerleaders and mascots, but were drowned out be the home team, who playing far better football. An early interception and some good power running gave UCLA the edge and they never looked back. The UCLA running back, Johnathan Franklin looked particularly impressive with immense speed and power and scored a TD in the first quarter.

A 3-13 lead to UCLA took us into half time, where the field was swamped with high school cheerleaders for a show. There were also male UCLA cheerleaders that lead the dance, something that I have never seen before. When the players came back out the commentator said: “ Thanks Bruins. You made us win the first half, you can do it again. Goooooo Bruins!” Which got a mighty cheer. The Wildcats teased us with a potential comeback, by punching in an early TD. UCLA’s offense hit three straight punts, but they soon re-found their rhythm and put the game to bed with a nice passing touchdown.

There was far less fan competitions and give-aways like there are in the NFL. There was no “social section” of the stadium like you have at say Arizona, Jacksonville. This is a purer football experience, where people come to watch the football only. In an NFL stadium a non football fan could be rather entertained by the spectacle, but here it is all about the football.