A Wrigley Wretrospective

So I obviously screwed up the posting schedule for this week. What are you gonna do, cry about it? (If you did plan on crying about it, please don't - it's not productive. Wait - wait, really, are you actu- here, just take this damn tissue. Take it. No, seriously, this is getting embarrassing.)

I'm sure none of you want to read a recap of the game at this point, so I won't write one. Okay, I will: Mikel Leshoure good, NU tackling bad, Evan Watkins not Dan Persa, tee-hee we scored in that other end zone, Kain Colter! There, done. But I'd be doing you, the reader, a disservice, if I didn't painstakingly detail my day.

So here goes.

Gents: if you ever plan on waking up at 5:30 a.m. to go to College GameDay, curtail your Friday evenings accordingly. Wise advice, and fairly easy to comprehend and formulate, but, none of us took it. I'm not sure how any of us put on clothes, let alone purple ones and sunglasses. We left the building at around 5:45, and it was still dark out, and we already realized we were making a huge mistake.

The el ride was about 15 people wearing purple at 5:30 am. I'd venture to say upwards of ten of these were drinking. My friends Loko'd (r.i.p.), I drank something out of a paper bag, which, legally, could have been absolutely anything, therefore, by my fourth amendment rights, I argue that I was drinking water out of a large glass bottle and there's nothing you can do to tell me I was lying. Incidentally, i had one bottle of Colt .45 brand water and one bottle of Wildcat Malt Liquor brand water.

We got to College Gameday at around 6:45, as the sun was starting to come up. We had read all the emails and hubbub and hype about how we would need to get on these buses at 3:30 a.m. to get on the show. Seeing as I'm a Northwestern student and know our student body's ability to get to sporting events - they'll show up, just... not on time - I had a sneaking suspicion this was overwhelmingly false. When we got there - 3 hours later than we supposedly needed to to be even close to likely to get on the show - the place was completely empty. We saw some kids we knew who had showed up at 3:30 to get on the show. They were the most miserable group of humans I've ever seen. One claimed to have fallen asleep standing up in the GameDay pit, the other just looked like he needed to murder somebody. We grabbed some Egg McMuffins - McDonalds, the underrated MVP of Wrigley Day - and went to our friend's apartment. One of the two people we met at GameDay decided to come with us after asking "is it inside", to which the answer was "yes, it is an apartment".

Actual conversation between a cop and me outside the GameDay pit:

CPD Officer: Uh, sir, excuse me? (Gestures at me) Can you bring over that bottle you're holding? (Me, sheepishly pointing at myself) Yes, bring it over. Now pour it out. (I pour it out.) Now throw the bottle away.

Me: Thanks!

The percentage of cop interactions that end in "Thanks!" must be slim to none, but after about 35 ounces of water, I wasn't going to complain about losing the last five as opposed to picking up a ticket for public or underage water drinking.

Our friends' place was a 15 minute walk but we made it into a 45 minute one because we didn't understand the geography of the Wrigleyville area. Our friend was stocked up on the beverage of choice:

7-11 brews a beer. This beer is simply called "Game Day". Variants include Game Day and Game Day Light. It costs less than that water and hops with which it was brewed. I have included a photo because I had no idea it existed until the day on which I attended College GameDay and was therefore fascinated by its very existence. I was preoccupied with my two bottles of water, so, no biggie.

After the 45 minute walking debacle we decided to cab it back to Wrigley.

So, GameDay: I had my sign. I had it. I had a sign. It had two signs on it: one said "Watkins Flocka Flame" and the other - the winner of the poll - said "Hey Corso, Show Us Your Willie... the Wildcat Mascot Helmet". The Flocka one was originally supposed to be accompanied by one of two photos:

this one:

or this, more disturbing one

(which i would have put more care into photoshopping had I actually had a printer.)

So, Watkins Flocka Flame - a bad pun on a rapper's name - or "Hey Corso, Show us Your Willie" - a bad pun based on the name of our school's mascot. Neither of these were offensive. So I walk up to the GameDay gate with my sign. They ask to see my sign. I am not worried about it getting taken away.

"Watkins Flocka Flame? What does this mean?"

"There's a rapper, his name is Waka Flocka Flame."

"A rapper?"

"Yeah. Waka Flocka. But like with Evan Watkins."

"I don't think you can bring that in."

"Wait, why?"

"You can't. Let's look at the other side."

I realized after they were making a fuss about Watkins Flocka Flame that my chances of bringing the sign in were slim to none. So I decided to make a big friggin deal about it.

"BUT THAT'S THE NAME OF OUR MASCOT! LOOK, AT THE FINE PRINT! THERE'S AN ELLIPSIS THERE!"

No avail.

I'm not typically the type to be confused and mad. But when I saw that somebody - somebody who deserves the highest praise I can possibly bestow on any person - had a sign that said "Evan Watkins Slays Pussy Nightly", I became enraged - although very, very happy for that person, and for Wildcat Nation as a whole. What about my sign was deemed offensive that Evan Watkins Slays Pussy Nightly had not triggered? Were these people so versed in Waka Flocka that they knew pretty much every word he says is the name of a gun or a reference to dealing cocaine? WHY DID THEY TAKE MY SIGN?

The world will never know. But I will have my vengeance someday. By sneaking in an even better sign to College GameDay next time it comes to Northwestern. MARK. MY. WORDS.

And if College GameDay never comes back to Northwestern, I'll just have to find that security guard who took my sign and waterboard her while listening to Waka Flocka as loudly as possible. FLOCKA!

Anyway: another sign you did not need to get to GameDay at 3:30 a.m.: at approximately 9:30 - halfway through the show's taping - I went to Taco Bell to go pee. I got back inside in less than five minutes, and the five minutes of waiting on line was mainly composed of talking to Dan Persa's sister about whatever it was Dan Persa's sister felt like talking about, which was mainly being/introducing herself as Dan Persa's sister.

We saw these two guys with Auburn flags, so we went over and gave them $1 bills. They were standing next to some Mississippi State fans, and tried to get the Mississippi State fans to take the money, but they wouldn't.

Lee Corso is a pretty awful person.

The time in between the end of GameDay and the beginning of the game goes by pretty quickly. We ate some greasy lunch and somebody tried to buy ping-pong balls, there was a crappy 90's cover band somewhere, and it still felt warm. The actual game was awesome, if it wasn't for the whole "losing" and "being so cold that I wore a hood over my comfy hat and put my arms inside my sleeves" thing, also, the "me being so tired that I fell asleep during a media timeout three times in the first quarter" thing, which, to be honest, is pretty embarrassing. It was my first bout with football game narcolepsy, and hopefully my last, because nothing says "excitement" like "napping." Nice black unis, though.

There were at least four Sippin' on Purple readers on my el ride home. I pretended that made it okay, but, it, uh, kinda sucked anyway.

That's it. On to previewing Wisconsin.