Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yeah, I guess. I look at the stuff my mom let me do as a kid that I wouldn’t dream of letting my kids do.  Riding in the back of pickup trucks, riding bikes on dangerous roads with almost no shoulder to get off on if a car came. I don’t think sitting by myself around 55,000 people when I was 9 would have made the cut though.

My folks had 5-kids. If they lost one, it would be a 20% loss. Forty years later, if I lost one it would be all I had, a 100% loss. Our math was different. My mom had to watch over the babies and supervise my older sister on not hiking up her skirt (my sister is 66). They were young and had little children and would have no idea what I was doing, or where I was, so long as I was home at dinner and before bed time.

In the 1990s I saw the son of a local meth-head at age 7 ride his bike to the river with a fishing pole and stand in the middle of the river on a rock. I was horrified. But at age 9 I would have done the same, and no one in our Catholic town with big families would have seen a thing wrong with it in the 1960s.

Yes, but a worse experience occurred in 1968 when I was 11. But, I believe in redemption, and I was redeemed. I had a paper route since I was 9 delivering the Des Moines Register, so I had my own money. Mom and Dad had tickets, I had none. So I put my index finger up out-front signaling I needed 1-ticket. A guy offered me a ticket for I think $5, so I asked, where is it? It was in the end zone and in that day, Iowa sold "knot hole" tickets to kids in the end zone for select games for $2 or $5, I don't remember which price, applied to which years. But Iowa wasn't selling knot hole tickets for that Indiana-Iowa game.

I wasn't so sure I wanted a ticket in the end zone at his price. I said to him let me ask my dad, but dad was no where to be found at that moment. I found dad, and he started hollering at me harshly about dadgummit, and he wasn't Bobby Bowden so that isn't exactly what he said. I was feeling really bad. I put my finger up again, pretty much not crying. A few moments later a middle-age woman found me, and I said, "How much?" For a cute little boy like you this ticket is free.

I didn't question the seat location. I accepted it. My mother was beaming. I sat on the 25-yard line about 25 rows up. At half-time the stadium announcer asked the Iowa legislators to stand and everyone around me stood up. It was the best seat I sat in until I went to one of Iowa's Alamo Bowls in 1996 and we sat in Row 2 on the 40 behind the Iowa bench. My brother-in-law was the San Antonio I-Club president.

I was 11 on the TSIO in 1953 (post above). No way in Hell does an 11 year old ride a bus by himself, much less with a girlfriend, from Woodlawn to Legion Field today. Not for the last 30 or 40 years for that matter.

I remember when I felt young when I showed up to CFN at 19

Thanks, CW.  I thought maybe it was but wasn't totally sure.  Most of our Thanksgiving meals revolved around that annual game.  I can't remember the first game I actually watched on TV, but can remember the radio broadcast.  My dad preferred the radio broadcast so much that when he went to the games in the stadium, he wore his radio headset rather than listen to the crappy PA announcers in the stadium.  I think he would have enjoyed most of the changes over the last decade (he passed in 2011).

The first time I watched that game was in 1971.  It was a pretty good one to watch.

Back in the day, there was one game a week on TV.  It was called, oddly enough, well, you know.  It was nearly always ND or OSU or Texas et al.

The newspaper the next day would have large photos of key plays from the UGA and Tech games with arrows and arcs showing where the ball was thrown.  Later on Sunday would be a kind of replay with the coach of each team.  I can still hear Dooley's monotone with the announcer who later became highly regarded but wasn't yet, Larry Munson.  Larry was from Nashville and early on not really a Dawg fan.  He was actually boring.  There was a game in 1972 I think it was at Kentucky where he got excited and became a fan.

If UGA and Tech were ranked in the top ten, that game would make the GotW, often, in part because not much else was happening.  The two polls were big items for me, as a kid, seeing whether we moved up or not.  If we lost, I would ignore them, and the shows.  UGA was good in 1966 and 1968 and I, being young, expected them to keep getting better and better, which didn't really happen consistently.

They were not good when I was on campus and I attended a few games, not many, and the stands were not very full.

We had to take 6 quarters of PE.  You started with calisthenics, and at the end of the quarter if you passed this pretty tough test, you could pick any PE course you wanted.  I managed to pass in part because of the long jump, and there was a 25 yard swimming event and a 600 yard swim, which was tough for me.  I took volleyball one quarter and half the other folks there were UGA football players.  They were not any bigger than I was, the tight end was there and we had some epic battles at the net.  I once spiked through his hands and he went down, I was mortified, Richard Applebie, nice guy.  He got up smiling and said "Good hit".  His nose was bleeding.  A few days later he spiked and caught me and he was past the net to see if I was OK, I was laughing, we all laughed, but it hurt.

At least I didn't take out our starting TE.  He later beat Florida 10-7 on a tight end pass.    I remember taking bowling which was coed and found a GF for a while who was a piano major.  I liked her a lot, but she was weird it turned out.

I moved to a private barely off campus dorm my soph year that was pretty nice and coed, which was a big deal back then, but not really.

Back in the day, there was one game a week on TV.  It was called, oddly enough, well, you know.  It was nearly always ND or OSU or Texas et al.

The newspaper the next day would have large photos of key plays from the UGA and Tech games with arrows and arcs showing where the ball was thrown.  Later on Sunday would be a kind of replay with the coach of each team.  I can still hear Dooley's monotone with the announcer who later became highly regarded but wasn't yet, Larry Munson.  Larry was from Nashville and early on not really a Dawg fan.  He was actually boring.  There was a game in 1972 I think it was at Kentucky where he got excited and became a fan.

It may have seem to you that Ohio State was always on, but it didn't seem that way to me. The good thing was that WOSU (the public TV station) would show a delayed broadcast of the game. So I would listen to it on 610 WTVN and then later watch it on TV. 

It may have seem to you that Ohio State was always on, but it didn't seem that way to me. The good thing was that WOSU (the public TV station) would show a delayed broadcast of the game. So I would listen to it on 610 WTVN and then later watch it on TV.

Well, it usually was one of the Blue Bloods anyway for obvious reasons, USC, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Michigan ...Alabama on occasion.  The shift in population really had not occurred then, Michigan probably had 2.5 times more people than Georgia.