It’s a little strange sitting home watching football on New Years after so many years of being at bowl games for the holidays (for the record I’ve been to 23 bowl games) but with the slump that Penn State was in before this season I’ve started to get used to it.
One trip that stands out was thirty years ago. Penn State played Alabama in the first Sugar Bowl in the Superdome on New Years Eve December 31st 1975. The game started at about 8 PM local time and seemed to drag on forever. Penn State wound up losing 13-6 with the game ending a little past 11:30 which meant that we were going to have to rush to get down to Bourbon Street before midnight.
I was with Tod Jeffers and he and I rushed to the famed Pat O’Brien’s. Unfortunately, hundreds of others had the same idea and we wound up trapped in line during a rainstorm. Sure enough, midnight struck with us still in line. Cheers and noisemakers started going off and everyone started hugging and kissing their dates. Bummer, we had lost the game, we were soaking wet, and we had failed to get into the bar before midnight – the night wasn’t going well at all.
At that point I looked up and there was this cute blond coed dressed in Penn State blue standing in line just in front of me. Time to seize the moment. I just grabbed her, wished her a Happy New Year, and laid a big kiss on her. The kiss must have worked because I wound up dating her for about 3 1/2 years.