FSU ROADTRIP

I hate you, Tony Carter, but not in like a passionate hatred if we'd lost but more like a hate of a punk ass player who showboated in the endzones and slapped the ball out of James Davis's hand when he was already down on the goal line.

I’m a little late posting this, but after a long and fantastic weekend in Tallahassee, I had to decompress a little bit and let my thoughts settle before I posted about my experience. My first thoughts to put online were limited to describing how much I partied and how hot it was down there. It took me about 5 minutes to realize how tired and hacky it would be to do that, so I’ll just barely touch on that part. Anyone who has visited FSU probably knows that as far as hospitality to opposing fans goes, there is little to none to be found. My take on that is a mixed bag. I traveled down with my former roommate Andrew who has an extensive list of FSU contacts with whom he attended high school. Everyone we met who he had some connection to was absolutely welcoming, cool, and laid back. The other Florida State students I met tended towards the trucker hat, sweatband, and hemp bracelet wearing douchebag type. In my high school, there were two types of partiers: the popular kids who drank together and the sketchy ass kids who would show up hammered and uninvited to your party. The second kind of kids all go to Florida State.

Tallahassee is a very college student friendly town. With 40,000 FSU students, 25,000 FAMU students, and another 20,000 attending Tallahassee CC, the town’s economy is largely driven by pouring booze down throats and doling out cheap food to drunkards. My only beef was that, just like Hollywood movies tell us (I’m looking at you, Matthew McConaughey’s pit stains in A Time to Kill), certain parts of the South have yet to discover air conditioning. The house we crashed at, balls-stick-to-your-leg hot. The bars we attended, ditto. It’s not like I’m not used to heat, I went through two a days in the summer in South Carolina for 8 years and now reside in Atlanta. I know heat. But I also know the magic of dropping a dollar on sweet, sweet A/C to keep your ass non-swampy when passed out drunk on a couch.

Yeah, FSU has blazing hot girls. They have more than Clemson on a purely numbers game, but their ratio of hotties to average chicks was no higher than Tigertown. I would rather have a semi-uppity Southern belle than a wannabe cowgirl in jorts and halter top downing enough whiskey to suppress the memories of sucking off the d-line postgame last weekend. (Not to say that that’s all there is at either school, I just tend to work in generalizations as broad as Bob Ross’s paintbrush.)

Day by day, just like the Step by Step theme song.

DAY 1: THURSDAY

• Got to Tally around 9 PM, headed to the Indian Woods apartments across the street from Doak Campbell to meet Andrew’s friends, got lit up and caught the Night Nole to Bullwinkle’s.
• $3 gets you about 5 shots of house liquor in a mixed drink in a sand castle bucket. Word.
• We ambled around Bullwinkle’s and took in the scenery at all three of the bars inside the building. It was akin to a bigger Tiger Town Tavern albeit with an outdoor bandstand and patio bar on top.
• No air conditioning and the place was packed elbow-to-asshole. Everyone was dripping with sweat. Now I know why so many FSU students wear visors and sweatbands, now only if someone could explain the need for the chin curtains.

Bullwinkle's: Cheap Booze and Panties.

• Andrew and I take shots of Patron till the bottle runs out. Great thinking! Take a body already full of beer and cheap liquor and guzzle expensive shit when you can’t even taste it. Also, me+tequila=smashing machine, thankfully I didn’t destroy worlds this night.
• I felt like such a punk bitch, I had to swallow back vomit at the bar, go quickly to the bathroom, only to realize I was going to be alright. I’ve never been ‘that guy who just puked in the bar’ even on my 21st birthday and I wasn’t going to be this night.
• Last call, we head across the street to Gumby’s. I’m sure it was the booze talking but that was the best pizza evar.
• We hitched a cab ride home with a drunken cabbie who was cussing at his wife on the phone.
• Pass out on the couches, 3 AM.

DAY 2: FRIDAY

• I wake up around 6 to find that someone has kindly covered my carcass with a blanket. The television is blaring an infomercial, my head is pounding, and I can’t find the remote. I locate it when Alex, asleep on the other couch, rolls over and I see it stuck to his body like an electronic remora.
• I manage an hour of sleep in the next four before everyone else wakes up. I pop a No-Doz and do the requisite super short visitor shower and try not to use all the hot water.
• We hit up SuperPerros, home of Colombian style hot dogs and hamburgers. We all get a Colombian burger, piled with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, relish, onions, mayo, ketchup, grilled pineapple, and crunched up potato chips. It was delicious even thought It looked like what I usually vomit up after a long night downtown capped off with McDonald’s.
• Alex, our host, works at the University Center Club, a private club inside of Doak Campbell. We all stop by for a visit; another of my friends is starting a private club near Clemson so he picks up some brochures to see how they do it. The club was beautiful, like a high end country club inside of a college stadium, replete with high-end bar and grill. It showed me Clemson still has some catching up to do to be at Doak’s level, amenities-wise.
• We cruised around campus, taking in the eye candy and stopping by the Garnet & Gold. I saw something on campus that shocked me. In just 15 or 20 minutes cruising around, I saw no less than 5 people wearing either UF or Miami gear wandering around campus. I know that Florida is a big state with a ton of college students, and it can be sometimes tough to get in where you want, but give me a break, what, Miami was too tough to get into so you ‘settled’ on FSU?? If someone wore USC schwag on campus at Clemson not only would their professors flunk them but they would be coldcocked in the mouth and left knocked the fuck out on campus, only to wake up in all Clemson merchandise as a less than subtle warning.
• We stopped by King’s BBQ on Pensacola on the way home that evening. If you are in Tallahassee you cannot miss this place, it is a hole in the wall, but a gem. Best ribs and collard greens I’ve ever had. If you know collards, these were the syrupy sweet homemade kind, not the vinegary, ham filled restaurant kind.
• We ingested the smoky goodness back at the pad and fell into a short rib-induced coma. “Thanks, ribs!”
• We awoke, our hands still smelling of Liquid Smoke, and headed over to the Palace Saloon. This place was considerably less crowded than Bullwinkle’s and our friends knew the bar staff so we were served promptly and for free. No Clemson fans to be found here but we had seen cars all day long sporting orange and white. We drank our fill and caught a ride with a friend to Bullwinkle’s. On the way we spotted a cop car in the Denny’s parking lot and saw a cameraman get out of the back and point his camera at our intersection. We all stuck our heads and arms out the windows and started drunkenly screaming obscenities and random deep thoughts towards the camera, maybe making it onto Tally COPS. Maybe.
• Bullwinkle’s was again packed as hell, with maybe 25-33% Clemson fans. I didn’t recognize anyone but we took advantage of $10 all you can drink while it lasted. I was accosted by an angry, drunk girl as I slipped by because she thought I didn’t say “excuse me.” Well, I am a polite Southern boy and I always say excuse me to ladies as I knock them out of the way in a crowded bar with my 6’4” Brian Dennehey-esque physique. There are few things as daunting to me as a crowded bar. My small friends slip through the crowd with ease and I have to bull through like a fullback or a drunken Frankenstein busting down doors. But I bought her a couple drinks and everything was copacetic.
• Last call, the bar lets out, a very heavy police presence lingering outside as crowds of Clemson and Florida State fans erupted into cheers and shit talking. We drove back to Indian Hills to slip into a party filled with absolutely no one we knew. We drank their alcohol, saw their women strip, and left when it was long past appropriate to do so.
• 6 AM, we get back home and “sleep” if drunken slumber can be considered that.

DAY 3: SATURDAY, GAMEDAY!

• I woke up to ESPN Gameday just in time to hear the announcer butcher Ray Ray McElrathbey’s last name, not a difficult move. I think someone mentioned it was SEPARATION SATURDAY but I can’t be sure. This surely wasn’t mentioned enough times.
• We met up with Andrew’s girlfriend’s father Tom and his friend Mike and set up a tailgate at an old printing warehouse across the street from the FSU intramural fields.
• Beer and t-bones, warm weather, gameday: It’s a beautiful thing and a butchered sentence.
• All the FSU fans around us were incredibly cordial and we were happy to see that, as usual, Clemson traveled exceptionally well. I would guess 5-8,000 fans made it into the game and another 1,000 just ambled around the gameday milieu.
• As an old country boy once said, it was hotter than two whores in a pepper patch.

Sometimes they cheer when their mouths aren't full of cock.

• We went, again, to Indian Woods which was now filled with thousands of students/fans and where each apartment was full of kegs and where DJs played songs off their laptops. Bootleg “SMOKE A BOWL WITH A NOLE” shirts depicting the FSU logo toking on a peace pipe were all the rage.
• There were only a handful of Clemson fans in the crowd, and save for our class rings, Andrew and I were neutral to avoid confrontations since both of us are known to be easily provoked into a fight. It was better to be less visibly a fan than to spend the night in Leon County DC. The DJ, full of as much class as his matching NY Yankee shirt and hat and meth addict sores alluded to, shouted on the PA for Clemson fans to get the fuck out. Classy.
• Every girl above a 4 dressed like a slut. I fully encourage this behavior. As usual, the Clemson girls wore sundresses and Southern type conservative togs. Thank you, Jesus, for inventing gaucho pants.
• We crossed the street, sold off a couple of extra tickets, and settled in for a hell of a ballgame.

THE GAME

• Other than last year’s Miami game, a 3 OT loss at Death Valley, this was the tensest game I’ve ever witnessed. Our tickets were in the corner of the end zone, about half way up the bowl. Great view save for the lack of depth perception. We were near some older FSU fans who were nice, and some hammered drunk students who were pretty rude, as most student sections tend to be. The Chief Osceola entrance, while unique and full of heritage, was not very exciting, it seemed a little drawn out. He oughta bust out of the gate and go straight to slamming the spear into the grass rather than riding around for 5 minutes. Just my two cents.
• I have never seen a game with so many weird occurrences. The two blocked kicks returned, the two point conversions, all of it was very odd football.
• As cliché as it sounds, there really was electricity in the air during some of the many momentum swings. DO YOU SEE WHAT PART OF MY SEAT I’M SITTING ON? YEAH, IT’S THE EDGE.
• The drive at the end of the game was a thing of beauty. I heard from rock solid sources that Will Proctor walked up to the head ref prior to that last drive, patted him on the ass and said “This is what it’s all about, Jack. We’re going to drive it down the damned field and win this thing.” I thought it was special for a guy who is from Florida and wanted to go to FSU to come into Doak on his first try and win the game. I bet FSU would love to have Proctor about now.
• James Davis is a beast.

A BEAST!

• The quick snap was achingly beautiful, and it makes me LOL (that means laugh out loud, OK???) that FSU fans have posted on boards that they thought it was cheap we won the game on a trick play. Wait, FSU fans calling out a team for winning on trickery? What? Pot. Kettle. Black. Words. Periods.
• The touchdown on 3rd down with :08 seconds to go was perfection. Roman Fry got a key block and Hunter and Pearson had brutal hits to clear the way for JD. And we actually made an extra point after the touchdown! WE CAN DO IT!
• After all the shit talking there was nothing quite as satisfying as seeing the FSU fans shut the hell up and hang their heads in disgust. Clemson fans stayed around for 10-20 minutes inside the stadium cheering to the Tiger Rag and doing cadence counts until the team left the field. We were loud and rowdy as hell leaving the stadium.

PWNED!!!!11!!!!1!one

• We wandered around for a while after the game, stopped at the Circle K for beer and burgers, until we decided to call it a night and go the hell home.
• That’s about all there is to tell. 3 days of debauchery capped off with a classic game.

"Clemthon played a thuper game verthuth Florida Thate. I give them a thticker!" Somewhere at home is a photo of me and Lou from USC Football Camp in my high school days.