My First American Football Game! UF v UM

By Lucie Rowell, University of Florida, United States

Now, I would not consider myself an American football fan, but this weekend may have changed my mind! I got tickets to the most sought-after game, the University of Florida versus the University of Miami (which was also the first game of the season). The crowds were huge, similar to the size of Wembley Stadium—insane to say it is college football! I got chatting to people that had come from all over Florida to come and watch this game, which made me feel that much more lucky that I was there to witness it.

We started by tailgating. If you don’t know what tailgating is, it basically a social gathering which takes place before a football game, usually this is families having BBQs. The collage students however, go to the frat houses. Yes, these actually exist! Going into one was like being in a movie scene, it was so surreal.

At UF there is this road named Fraternity Row, and this is where all the frats are located. These houses are HUGE, and there is also so many of them (around 25), each was as packed as this one here. We only managed to visit a couple, but within the ones we did go to, there was one with a saxophonist and one with a bouncy castle!

Here is a picture of me and another fellow UOM student Lilah with her roommates outside one of the frats which had a lion for some unknown reason (painted in the UF colours of course). After this we headed to the stadium for the start of the game at 3pm. The roads were absolutely full of fans from both teams as we filed into the ground. As seen in the first photo, pre-kick off there was a marching band, cheerleaders and dancers. Overall, the energy in the arena was amazing everyone was ready for the players to run onto the field.

Throughout the game I started understanding what was going on, what a touchdown was, what positions the players were, etc. This made it that much more interesting now I actually knew what was going on! I also had an amazing hot dog (which was the size of my head) but didn’t get a picture of it because I ate it too quick lol. During halftime there was a performance from the cheerleaders and dancers which was amazing, some may argue even better than the football 😊

Although we lost, these are memories I will hold with me for the rest of my life. Next week there is another game against Samford, which I am so excited to go and experience the same atmosphere again!