Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Random thoughts about the NCAA South Regional experience

Thought I'd do a post to sum up my experience:

  • Firstly, a humongous FUCK YOU to METRO for jacking up the price of parking at the Fannin Park and Ride unannounced on Sunday. I pull up expecting to pay the normal $2.50 and this dude comes up to me and wants $10 to park. If I was a Houston taxpayer I'd want Frank Wilson's head on a stick for that.
  • Granted the $10 from METRO was a hell of a lot better than the $20 that Reliant wanted.
  • As far as the train itself, I actually liked it. I'll do it again, just steer clear of parking there when there are major events going on.
  • I thought that this would be the best of all the regionals with a lot of close games and I end up with three double-digit wins. That was a little disappointing.
  • Concessions at Reliant are too fucking expensive. $5.50 for a Dr. Pepper is outrageous.
  • I loved the seats. Only real gripe was that there was only about four inches between rows on the risers they set up down low, so you were fighting the heads of tall dudes to see the action. The elevated court did help a lot.
  • The environment was really something, especially for the Sunday game. Friday the crowd was kind of trickling in during the early game (Texas and Stanford) and about half the building left at the half of the Michigan St.-Memphis game (as Memphis was leading 50-20), but they were all there and LOUD for the Sunday game between Memphis and Texas. Shame the outcome wasn't better.
  • My cell phone sucks for texting. Next one's got to have a full keyboard.
  • Memphis is a hell of a lot better of a team than I'd expected them to be. I'd discounted them because they were in Conference USA, but seeing them in person gave me a whole hell of a lot of respect for them. They were just dominating.
  • Wearing a Longhorns hat in public wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be but I still won't root for them when they're playing the Aggies.
  • The Memphis and Michigan State fans that I met were all really nice. I'd say the same about Stanford fans, but I don't recall talking to any of them.
  • I should have gone back to Beaumont the back way. Traffic on I-10 was pretty thick since the Memphis fans that drove were going back the same way. I ended up getting off of I-10 at Winnie and taking a two-lane highway that goes about the same route the rest of the way into town.

Well, that's all my tired mind can think of right now.

1 comment:

K T Cat said...

That's way cool that you got to go. Thanks for sharin your experiences.