Back in the summer when the Pitt football schedule was announced, Dan Bonk noted that the game against Akron would be played on September 12, the weather should be nice, and, hey, this might be a nice road trip to take - out and back in the same day - and take our wives with us. When the dust settled, it was going to be a quadruple date - Sproules, Bonks, Martins, and Meisners. Hail to Pitt!
Well, as the weather forecasts were becoming more and more ominous as the week went on, a game day decision was made early Saturday morning, and the four wives decided that discretion was the better part of valor, so they opted out. At 2:00, Dan, Len, Tom and I set out in Dan's car for Akron. Yes, in keeping with a college football theme, 'neath a slate gray September sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.....
The further west we rode, the worse those skies became, and the more the rain continued to fall. We arrived in Akron, parked about two hours before game time, and whiled away about an hour and a quarter enjoying one of Akron's finest just-off-campus dining establishments (Taco Bell). We entered the Stadium, and posed for posterity, while light-to-moderate rain fell.
(Bob, Dan, Tom, and Len)
Little did we know at the time, that that was about the BEST that the weather was going to be that evening.
We settled into our seats,
and proceeded to take in the action on the field.
Did you ever watch a game on TV that was being played in a torrential downpour, with only a few people in the stands and say to yourself "What kind of idiots would be sitting in the stands at a game like this?" Well, now you know.
At halftime we retreated under the stands, watched the third quarter while standing behind a camera well, only to see the rain get even worse:
At the end of the third quarter, with Pitt up 17-7, we left the Stadium and headed home, taking one last look backward.
A crazy night, but a fun one, and in the car ride back home we were already laughing about the whole night. I can envision that with each retelling of the story, the rain will become more and more torrential, the temperatures will get lower and lower (in fact, the temps were pretty nice, which saved us from a REALLY bad evening), the winds will become hurricane force, and the entire storm will be of Biblical proportions. By the 2018 retelling of this trip, we will have had needed an Ark to get home.
Oh, and we, or at least I, did learn one interesting factoid. Did you know that John Heisman, the guy who invented trophies, once coached at the University of Akron? No? Well he did, and a statue memorializing his tenure there sits just outside the main gate of the Stadium (a very nice facility, by the way).
And now you know, the REST of the story.
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