A Very Good day

The panorama function of my iPod Touch camera warps the field but click the photo for an idea of what the scene was like at Yankee Stadium yesterday. The view from our seats was surprisingly good.

The drama wasn't quite as, well, dramatic as the last bowl game I attended, but the outcome was much sweeter.

Our trip from New Orleans back to State College in 1979 was long and painful, and not just because my buddy's beater broke down and we had little choice but to sell it for junk and use the proceeds to buy four Greyhound tickets and some potato chips for the ride somewhere in Tennessee. That was only the second-worst part of the trip. The worst part was seeing Alabama's Barry Krauss come over the top and stonewall Mike Guman just short of the touchdown that would have meant a national championship for Penn State. You can read about it HERE – but I won't.

The stakes were nowhere near as high in yesterday's Pinstripe Bowl game against Boston College in Yankee Stadium, but the ending was a lot more enjoyable as the Nittany Lions erased a 21-7 deficit with a touchdown on the final play of the third quarter, tied the score at 24 on a 45-yard field goal with 20 seconds left in regulation, and won the game with a touchdown and PAT in overtime, 31-30.

As a traditionalist, I've never been a huge fan of northern bowls, but the atmosphere around Yankee Stadium was absolutely electric . . . if you were a Penn State follower. Several estimates were that 40,000 of the 49K-plus sellout crowd were PSU fans and to my eyes that might have been low.

All-in-all, a wonderful day with Team BGA, one that a Boston College fan who had us convinced we were on the wrong jam-packed express train back to our car (and would find ourselves going an extra hour north before having to turn around and travel an hour back) couldn't spoil. We only found out he was "punking" us when we got off at the first stop the train made and discovered it was the right station.

A day that began with a stroll on the beach in Massachusetts at 7:30 a.m. and saw many fans in shirt sleeves until halftime on an unseasonably warm late-December day, finally ended a little after 2 a.m. on snowy Moose Mountain.

Now? I need a nap so I'll be ready to go at 0-Dark-30 tomorrow when That Certain '14 and I hit the road so I can help her get settled for her new job in a suburb of Madison, Wis. ;-)