I’ve gotta be the only person who went to Ohio State (for seven years) and never went to a football game. This was back in the Woody Hayes era. I do wish I’d seen the band though.
Regarding water affecting the woodwind instruments: Not a problem for OSU, as it is an all-brass marching band.
At least we did get to see significant portions of the band shows. That has disappeared from most TV broadcasts anymore, in favor of 20 minutes of a few idiots yakking from behind a desk about how the losing team has to play better defense yada yada yada.
The bands and the cheerleaders and the costumed fans are just as much a part of the pageantry and fun of college football as the football teams. The bands, the good ones, put in just as many hours as the teams in making their performances the best they can, with no scholarships and only sporadically even expenses met. But what do they get for it at most places, and on almost all broadcasts?
Give Jim Tressel a huge amount of credit for promoting the OSU band as part of the program, even to the point of having the team join in singing the alma mater at the postgame show. Not many coaches understand that their job is more than what happens on the field and in the locker room.
Normally, halftime means time to hit the bathroom, and refill the refreshments. I don’t care about the bands, but a lot of people do. It is very much a part of the college football experience. Probably deserves more airtime.
The one exception to me skipping the halftime shows is The Bayou Classic. Grambling vs Southern. There, what happens on the field is secondary. The Bands ARE the show.
Totally agree. TV coverage, even newspaper coverage, of college ball games would be better if it included more of the overall atmosphere that makes actually going to the game such an experience. When I go to a college football game, what’s happening on the field is the main attraction but if that’s all I wanted to see I could stay home and… well, watch it on tv. Because that’s pretty much all you see on tv.
A college game is a cultural group experience, but tv distills it all down to just the actual athletic contest with only a hint of everything else going on there. Instead of the bands, the cheerleaders (they get a quick camera shot once in while), the mascots (quick shot between plays) the students and all their traditions, the streaker, the dog that gets loose on the field, all that stuff you see when you’re sitting in the stands, tv coverage tends to be solely and obsessively focused on the plays and the commentators. If the ball isn’t moving on the field, then the camera is on the commentators trying to come up with new ways to say old things.
Give me some atmosphere. Let me see the whole college game experience.
Jeez it’s people like you that gave us former band people a bad name (that bad name is of couse bandfags). We never went home. We were there to the end of every football game. That also included marching 5 miles in freezing rain during the NYC St Patrick’s day parade. There was never any thought to leaving because of rain.
I’m sure the band folks at CSU Fresno are so proud to read that. I cannot imagine being in such an organization. When you signed up for marching band, did you not know that it involved marching at football games?
We love going to the games. Our HS kids are heartbroken when the football team is eliminated from the playoffs. We never go home. The only reason we take the kids in is lightning.
This thread probably belongs more in MPSIMS, so let’s go there.
samclem
The game was played inside a stadium with a retractable roof, which was closed, so all the weather stuff is kinda moot.
Geez, that’s why they make band raincoats! Three years of high school marching band, and four years marching at Kent State…I sat in a lot of rain. Sure we wouldn’t have to wear the feathers (funny, but I can’t remember what they were called…shakos?) but unless the game was called, we marched. Sometimes they’d have us play from the sidelines instead of march during halftime so we didn’t tear up the field, but we sure didn’t go home.
The feather is acalled a plume. A shako is the hat that looks like a Q-tip.
You haven’t seen speed on a football field until you see a tuba player in a lightning storm. 
Man, the things we marched in…blistering heat, gumbo mud, tropical storms. Possibly the worst, though, was a Christmas parade I marched in–we had to run a parade drill while marching down a steep, cobblestone-paved hill toward a judges’ stand in a freezing rain. Icy cobbles and slick shoes make for an exciting finale; I think we convinced them that we were supposed to skate the last twenty feet. Fortunately, we were known for somewhat unconventional maneuvers.
I agree on the televised games, by the way. They really should show more than the plays and a bunch of talking heads. As far as I’m concerned, the football game is little more than an excuse for the pageantry.