Since I'm in the area ... My first college football game at an SEC stadium

My fall work in the SEC means I will occasionally get to drop in on extra sporting events, and I had the chance to take in my first college football game in an SEC stadium (although I have been to midnight yell practice at Texas A&M) at the University of Georgia's Sanford Stadium on Saturday.

While I have no special ties to Georgia, I've always had a soft spot for Sanford Stadium because of its distinctive hedges. When you see a lot of the big stadiums on TV, they're mostly distinguishable only by the colors painted in the end zones and worn by the fans. With Georgia, however, you see the hedges and instantly know where the game is taking place. It always makes me think of watching football with my grandfather as a kid.

Georgia's game on Saturday was a noon kickoff against Troy, a school I called twice in 2012 but was definitely going to be overmatched in this game. After a wake-up call around 5:30 am CT in Mississippi, I flew to Atlanta, got my rental car, and set out for Athens, Georgia (only a little more than a year after my first trip to Athens, Greece).

Sporting Park, four years later

After calling the Aug. 23 NWSL semifinal in Kansas City (more on that later) during the day, I got to take in an MLS game as a fan that night.

I'd been to the completed Sporting Park twice before, both when working for the Houston Dynamo, and both times the emotions of the game (a 3-0 Houston loss and a Houston win in the conference championship) overshadowed anything the stadium provided as far as takeaways.

So on this visit I spent the first half just watching the game from a press box-level seat, then spent the second half moving around to sit in several different seats (the south end zone, the top row of the 'G' in 'SPORTING' on the far sideline, and seats just behind the KC bench).

There's a lot to like about the stadium. The noise was great (at least until D.C. United took the game over with three goals in the first half), and I liked that the concourse is, at least for half the stadium, still in sight of the field. Very different from BBVA Compass Stadium in Houston and Red Bull Arena in New Jersey (at RBA, they won't even let you stand at the top of a section). Both shades of blue were everywhere, the crowd consisted of a good mix of people,and the place had a great energy level.

More than anything else, it was cool to see the finished product. On a Dynamo road trip to Kansas City in September 2010, I got a tour of the in-progress stadium, and here's a look at how things looked then and now (and a comparison of how much better cell-phone cameras have gotten!)

Sept. 2010	Aug. 2014