Wait, you promised!

Let me start this post by saying that never in my life have I ever had those super amazing seats we all covet at sporting events. Well, a couple times I’ve had pretty decent seats at hockey games, but I was not the person for whom those tickets were originally intended, so I don’t think they count.

Oh, I’ve had OK seats and mostly, I’m just thrilled to be there, but I’ve never had stellar seats for any kind of sporting events. I have this dream of sitting behind the dugout at Busch Stadium. Hasn’t happened. Yet. Even in college when I went to nearly every home basketball game, I didn’t have great seats. I always bought the student tickets and didn’t really have the energy or money to upgrade.

So last night, I went to the Missouri-Vandy game at Vanderbilt. Both of my alma maters in a fight to the finish! I, of course, was cheering for Mizzou, because honestly, that’s my team. I’ll cheer for Vandy, but not when they’re playing MU. I’d probably get kicked out of my home state! I coerced my friend Brandon to go along with me, and he showed up at my house around 7 for the 8:30 p.m. game. We fought (seriously our relationship is all about arguing like a brother and sister) about who drove the last time we did something together (I did) and we set out for the game. Needless to say, we found a place to park and got into the gym really early. I wasn’t sure where exactly our seats were, so once inside, we asked directions and set out on our way. And of course, our tickets, which I was ecstatic to have, were pretty much in the rafters.

I was OK with that. Actually, it was kind of funny. We started formulating a plan for where we would move after halftime and started scoping out where pockets of Missouri fans were sitting so that we could pick seats closer to the floor that wouldn’t get me killed.

Then, it happened.

This girl who works for someone who does something at Vanderbilt appeared by my side. “We want to give you these tickets as a promotion,” she said. She flashed the tickets at us and Brandon grabbed one. They were on the floor. They were GOOD tickets. “You’ll just have to appear on the screen for a minute,” she said. “It’s a promotion.”

Then, she saw my shirt. My Mizzou sweatshirt. The brightest one I own. “Oh,” she said. “You’re wearing a Mizzou shirt.” She hemmed and hawed and said she felt really badly but couldn’t give us the tickets. . . unless I took off my Mizzou sweatshirt. I just stared at her blankly. First of all, I wore that shirt on purpose to support MY team. It wasn’t coming off. And, secondly, I didn’t have a T-shirt on underneath and I wasn’t for appearing on the big screen half-dressed. And no one else wanted to see that either. She quickly realized she wasn’t getting me to take off my sweatshirt. AND TOOK THE TICKETS AWAY! She said she was going to talk to her boss and see what she could do, but basically that was her chance to excuse herself and never come back to talk to us. The tickets apparently went to someone else, and we were still in the rafters.

It didn’t matter though. It was kind of fun up there. There was this group of four or five women my mom’s age who liked to give each other five and fist bump when Vandy scored and that kind of made my day. And at halftime, we moved down to some open floor seats up behind the ESPN commentators. I sat next to some Missouri fans and could see Mike Anderson. All was well. Except of course the outcome of the game.

Mizzou had opportunity and I think, the skill, to beat Vandy, but didn’t. The “40 minutes of hell” style of playing took its toll on Vandy, especially Ogilvy (no. 4, AKA “the tall guy”). At one point, he just kind of fell down. I do think he was fouled, but most of the falling was caused by stumbling on his own dragging feet. (The Vandy fan behind me didn’t think so, but I did.)

The loss hurt, but honestly, neither team has a ton of stuff to brag about. Neither played to their potential and there was some very sloppy plays. I’m disappointed, but still happy I got the opportunity to go.

But now I’m thinking it might be fun to have season tickets to Vandy basketball games. . . .anybody want to go with me?