First football match I ever watched

Being in US, I had never been to any American football match so far… I had seen photos of these matches but had never been to one… During the homecoming event, there was a match between Sundevils (of ASU) and CAL golden bears (University of California, Berkeley)… Two of my friends and I went to the match… As we approached the stadium, we could see so many people walking towards the stadium…The capacity of the stadium being 73,379, we were dumbstruck to see thousands of people walking towards the stadium..

The funniest part was that we could see people selling tickets in black outside the stadium (when will we desis improve).. I had never been to any stadium in my life to watch any match or event… This was the first time that I went and looking at the size of the stadium and the crowd, I was on the ninth cloud immediately…The noise was too much as people were getting settled into their seats…Half of the stadium was yellow in color (because of the sundevil tshirts).. Even I had adorned a sundevil t-shirt which was white in color… While entering the stadium, we saw in a stall – devil “horns”…We bought one each and wore them…We hunted our seat and row and sat in our place…the match hadnt begun yet… We could see a bunch of sundevils making “A” letter and “ASU” letters formation.. then there was this ASU band which played the national anthem.. After that the students formed two lines and then the teams entered the stadium to be cheered by 70k people..

The match started and we were getting confused about what was happening…First time they would keep the ball in the middle and start.. the next time when they played they kept the ball towards left or right and started the match… An uncle who was sitting right next to us explained the rules..

The objective of the game is to score points by advancing the ball to the opponent’s end zone for a touchdown, or to kick field goals, and to prevent the other team from doing likewise.

The total duration of the match was one hour and was divided into four quarters, each being 15 minutes long…But in between, the clock was being stopped and hence the match extended from 7 PM to about 11:30 or so..

• Also each team is allowed 3 timeouts each half that they may use at their discretion…
• If there is a question as to whether or not a team has moved the ball far enough for a first down, the officials may bring the chains in to measure… While this measurement is taking place, the officials will signal for a stoppage of the clock… Once the measurement is finished and the ball is spotted, the referee will then signal for the clock to restart…
• there is a halftime also between second and third quarters…Band started playing and again group of people came, danced, made some formations and then some entertainment for the public.. few couples were given some prizes…

In the first half, ASU performed very badly and the other team (CAL) kept on scoring.. ..But after the half-time, ASU started playing really well and made touchdown after touchdown.. didnt allow CAL to make even a single touchdown.. ASU crowd started cheering and even we started shouting “ASU! ASU!”… The band started playing the song “we will…we will rock you”….People were not ready to even sit down and sparky would wave his hands, do pushups… everyone was so excited… And guess what happened! ASU WON! The crowd in the stadium rushed to the field and we could see what is being called the “Gold rush”..scores were like it was 20-7 , 20-14 then ASU started leading with 24-20….final was 31-20 🙂

I can say that I enjoyed the most in my life on that day.. I had never enjoyed so much before as far as I can remember 😀