Orange Bowl(ed)

Apparently we're (Lori and I) not meant to travel to bowl games. Perhaps we should just be banned from going to games - PERIOD. Our record in bowl games is an astounding 0-3. The Chick-fil-A bowl back in 2007, a 23-20 OT loss, was close....but that put us at 0-2. Our first bowl game, the Gator Bowl of 2000, also known as the Michael Vick Show, not so much. But the 2012 Orange Bowl....well, for the 2 or 3 of you reading this blog, you're already very aware those other 2 bowl outcomes pale in comparison to what we just witnessed.

It's kind of like my days working with the Panthers. The year I started working for them, 1-15. The year I leave, Super Bowl.

You know, I'm kind of getting depressed thinking about this.

But back to my Tigers. Yes, they got beat. They got beat bad. But seeing as how I was thinking a 6-6 season was going to be a "great" year, I'm more than proud of those guys. They won the conference championship. They won 10 games. They made it to a BCS bowl. That's a lot more than many other teams can say. And yes, they're in the ACC. No, it's not a powerhouse conference. But you know what, they still have to play football. I'll take our team, our school, our class and our standards - academics and athletics - any day of the week and twice on Sunday. My blood will always runneth orange!

Now that I'm off my soapbox, let me recap the trip a bit. After the Tigers clenched their spot in the Orange Bowl, I submitted a request to the ticket office, not really thinking we'd actually get the tickets. After all, we were declined tickets to the ACC Championship game. Granted, that one was just a few hours up the road, and on the weekend, where this one was a few hundred miles away and on a Wednesday...NOT a good time for a game. But a few days later, I received confirmation we secured our tickets. Now my dilemmas were - 1) How are we going to get there and 2) Who's going to watch the kids?

So....Clemson had a travel package where you could fly from Greenville / Spartanburg the day of the game, catch a bus from the airport straight to the stadium - including police escort - tailgate, watch the game, hop back on the bus to the airport and fly home for a pretty decent rate so I figured, "what the heck - let's do this". I booked the trip - then Lori (and I) had our Christmas present. Problem #1 solved. Problem #2...solved shortly after! Called Granny and...Granny came down to Georgia. She was looking for some kids to watch....

Below are some of the pictures - hope you enjoy: