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--' _J
Mixed crowd inhabits Memorial Stadium
Traditional tickets establish seasonal bonds
By Mark Lage
Staff Reporter
The sight of Memorial Stadium
filled with an amorphous mass of
red on game day is infamous, but
in reality the crowd is far from
uniform.
The east stadium is jammed full
of students, many of whom do not
sit where their tickets say they do,
many of whom have left seats in
the north and south stadiums va
cant.
The west stadium generally is
considered to be the old folks’
home of Nebraska football, al
though this is only hearsay -- I’ve
never sat there. But considering
the slow, intermittent pace that the
wave makes through that area, this
rumor seems well-founded.
The north and south stadiums,
outside of the areas reserved for
yearly student tickets, are interest
ing cases for the study of football
society. Since they both have been
built since I960, many of the tick
ets in each have had only one
owner, and there are areas which
are filled by little groups of people
whose line-ups have changed little
over the years.
1 myself was a part of one of
these little knots for about ten
years. In I960 or so, when the
South Stadium was being built, my
grandpa rents ordered three tickets.
They are the only people ever to
have owned the tickets for seats 9,
10 and 11, row 30, section 16.
When I was in fourth grade, my
grandparents offered me the third
ticket, and I didn’t give it up until I
graduated from high school.
The surrounding seats always
were occupied by the same people
for as long as I sat there, and,
according to my grandparents, for
a long time before that, too. This
creates some strange sorts of per
sonal relationships — these are
people that you’ve known for ten
or fifteen years, but you only see
them six or seven times a year; your
only connection is Nebraska foot
ball, and, because of the nature of
the seating, you’ve never had a
face-to-face conversation with
them. If you sit in front of them,
they talk into your ear and yoi
know them primarily by voice. 1
they sit in front of you, you tall
into their ear and you know then
primarily by the back of their head
I have a difficult time figuring
out what the people around me
reallv thought of my additiontothi
group. They’ve always been vep
nice to me, but I’m sure I had the
capability to annoy often. Because
of my intensive love for Nebraska
football as a youngster, and m}
good memory, I always came to the
f;ames with the roster memorizec
rom 1 to 99- And when one of the
adults around me made a mistake
I wasn’t bashful about correcting
them.
This developed into a long-run
ning joke between me anc
“Romey,” the man who, with hi;
wife and family, sat directly behinc
us. Many of you no doubt remem
ber when Roger Craig, current NFI
star, played for Nebraska. But he
was preceded a few years by hi;
older brother Curtis, who playec
wingback. When Roger played
Romey repeatedly made the mis
take of referring to him as Curtis
and I repeatedly corrected him.
After a while he just refused tc
call Roger anything out Curtis, and
i then began referring to any un
f identified player as Curtis. Before
; games he would lean over and ask
i me how I thought Curtis would
play that day. Years later, when
Roger and the -l9ers were tearing
through the NFL, Romey would ask
meifl had seen Curtison television
the other day.
Eventually, he just started call
ing me Curtis.
Romey has a son who often
would come to the big games in
place, I think, of Romey’s wife.
1 Before every play he would yell
: “hut! hut! hut!” until the ball was
, snapped, hoping, apparently, to
; draw the hated Sooners offsides
from row 30. After bad plays he
would just scream “Shiiiiiiiiii-hit!”
The first game I ever went to I
; was terribly thirsty at halftime, and
I saw Romey pouring out cups of
orange juice from a thermos. Inno
, cently,Iaskediflcouldhavesome,
and everybody laughed. Someone
, ran to get me a pop, and from then
on Romey brought a special con
tainer of straight orange juice for
me, something that I wouldn’t
understand until many years later.
In front of us sat Harry and his
wife, and their main characteristics
were that they smoked, and the
portable seats they brought were
too large by about rwo inches, and
encroached into our fooLspace.
Other than that they were very nice
people, and, after trying to com
See SOUTH on 11
