Brian Rosenthal: NU fans turn out in force
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A local columnist here wrote earlier in the week that he didn’t expect much red would invade Winston-Salem on Saturday.
Silly man. Didn’t he know the Bradley soccer team and the Dayton volleyball team were coming to town for a weekend visit?
Oh, yeah, and the Nebraska football team, too.
Even without the student-athletes from Bradley and Dayton, red was fairly prevalent here. In the parking lots. At Groves Stadium. Over at the IHOP.
Poor lads from Bradley. They tried getting a nice breakfast (we assume not a pregame meal?) but walked away when they saw the place was filled with Husker fans.
Or maybe they heard the place was filled with Husker fans. All was quiet until a Wake Forest fan poked his head into the dining room and yelled “Go, Wake!” That ignited cheers of “Go Big Red!”
Check, please.
Bring your hard hat
As for attendance at the game, it appeared nearly 10,000 Nebraska fans navigated their way through construction zones around Groves Stadium and helped deck the place in red. They sweltered, too, in 90-plus-degree heat.
Bill Callahan, in fact, began his postgame press conference by thanking those fans who traveled.
If any of them ever come back, they should be able to leave their hard hats at home and enjoy what looks to be a beautiful expansion to Groves Stadium (which is getting a new corporate sponsor name next season).
Think I’m joking about the hard hat? Three times in press row, our friends from up I-80 needed to dodge falling objects from above — once, a full cup of soft drink.
Otherwise, the makeshift press box worked nicely. We don’t get to enjoy many games from outside.
Then again, we normally aren’t the ones stinking in postgame interviews, either.
Bilas in town
ESPN basketball analyst Jay Bilas, who lives down the road in Charlotte, attended Saturday’s game as a spectator, along with his 9-year-old son.
Bilas is close friends with Nebraska football color commentator Matt Davison. Davison said the two played golf in the area for about three days last week. Bilas was also friends with former Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser, who died this summer.
Bilas, of course, played basketball down Tobacco Road at Duke in the mid-1980s.
His roommate his freshman season?
None other than Bill Jackman. Some people (namely, yours truly) may forget that the Grant native initially was a Blue Devil before transferring to Nebraska.
Going deep
* Saturday’s officiating crew, which included Big 12 member Scott Koch, was a hodgepodge of officials from various conferences. Is this regional crew experiment a thing of the future?
* There were some pretty dog-gone dejected Deacon fans after the game. Maybe football means more here than we think.
Then again, perhaps basketball still rules the roost. On the tube in the postgame media work room? A WNBA game.
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.
Most Commented news