First Trip to Kinnick

My first game at Kinnick stadium was October 5, 1985. The Hawkeyes, who were ranked #1 in the Nation for five weeks that year, came from behind to defeat Michigan State 35-31. The only specific play I remember (or think I do) was a long touchdown pass from Chuck Long to Quinn Early.

For the first time since I was a student, I purchased season tickets this year. I went in halvsies with a friend; we're attending a couple games together and then splitting the other four games.

So on October 13, 2007 I took my son to his first game at Kinnick. Unfortunately, we don't quite have the team that we had in 1985. Here we are before entering the stadium.



My son is 6 and I was worried about his attention span. You wouldn't think that a stadium full of 70,000 people would be boring, but in this day and age of 24-7 kids programming and X-Boxes, who knows? My worry was justified. He said, "I want to go home." for the first time with 7:56 left in the first QUARTER. It was 11:14 AM.



But actually it turned out OK. I held him off and we enjoyed the first half. I then made the command decision to leave at half-time partially because of Evan petering out and partially because my wife worked later that day and I was worried about getting caught in post-game traffic.

The Hawkeyes went on to win 10-6. I think Evan and I can take credit; I'm just not sure if they won because we were there at all or because we left.