Dr. G (far left) is our director and he get super stressed out around performance time. One kid's bag was lost and he was in full freak out mode. Haha, but we all survived. The middle guy is one of our BCS dudes that walked us around and let us know where we were suppposed to be. The Air Force guy on the right was our Officer in Charge of the trip - he's a chaplain and pretty funny.
Our first appearance was on Good Morning Arizona, and it was just the members of TAS that went on the trip. On the way over, our public affairs peeps (one lt. and one civilian) asked who would be the spokesman if the anchors wanted to give a mini-interview. Everyone immediately said "CURTIS!" and thats how I got to make a fool of myself on TV. haha - it wasn't horrible, but in response to one of her questions I had a good two second pause in the middle of my response. ...I don't want to talk about it haha
Sunday afternoon we went to the VA old folks home - and it was amazing. We sang for like 30 -40 minutes, and after every song those vets would lightly cheer and it was fun. But while we sang songs about the men that have died to make our country free, or about those who have given the last full measure of devotion, these veterans got somber as they remembered their buddies that they lost in combat. I saw tears, and I felt the power of the situation wash over me. Amazing experience. I'll post more about some stories I heard from one particular vet here in the next day or so.
On game day we went down to the stadium and it was pretty cool walking around the parking lot seeing all the crazy fans and walk down the ramp past security to the bottom of the bowl. After we ate, we hung out down in a locker room for a couple hours as we heard the stadium above fill to capacity. 78,000 screaming fans. Some people read books, some tried to nap, but I (naturally) went around taking goofy pictures and stupid movies. We were in the cardinal cheerleader's lockerroom and I thought it was hilarious that they would put up pictures of themselves on all the mirrors, the same way a budding star would put up a picture of their idol, like they were their own idol. haha. Whatevs.
The actual singing of the anthem was pretty cool, if you didn't catch it on TV, I'll try and find something online I can post here - but it was perhaps the most patriotic display in the history of the world. As we waited on the sideline, there was a big video presentation of troops over in Afghanistan and messages they wanted to give to their families, who had been given tickets to the game. They had the families down on the field watching, and as the video concluded, the soldiers on the video appeared from the tunnels and ran out to their unsuspecting families' arms -- a surprise reunion! It was pretty cool. A different choir sang God Bless America, then it was our turn. We walked out to the 20 yard line and started singing. As soon as we started they had a field-sized American flag being unfurled across the field by dozens of runners, and after the flag was stretched across the field a BALD EAGLE was realeased from the top of the bowl and it soared (majestically) across the whole field and was caught by a handler in the opposite endzone. Epic. Talk about cheering, the crowd ate it up! haha
We changed into our fan gear and made our way down to our seats -- face value of $350 that were selling online for $3500 plus! Brady and I had chosen to cheer for the underdogs, and we of course were seated in the Auburn half of the bowl, but there were enough Oregon fans scattered about that we were safe haha. The game was pretty fun, there was enough of a fight there at the end that we had our hopes up. The Auburn fans were fun and pretty rowdy, oregon fans were pretty dull, like they had been offended by the southern cousins at a family get together and they were silent in protest. We lost, but it was still one of the most intense weekends of my life!
