It was weird as hell for me to have a UCF home football game on and me not be able to watch it or even get updates (more on this later) other then the score updates in the Stadium. As I noted last week, I was at Nebraska for the game Saturday night. I promised everyone a review on Nebraska, a scout on Colorado and I will throw in some UCF thoughts as well.
Nebraska: This was my first trip ever to Nebraska, first game. I got some great treatment, took a tour of the facilities Friday afternoon and had field passes for the game. Here are my thoughts…
Fast:
Nebraska: This was my first trip ever to Nebraska, first game. I got some great treatment, took a tour of the facilities Friday afternoon and had field passes for the game. Here are my thoughts…
Fast:
- Facilities: They just opened up their new facility this season. It is absolutely incredible. So many cool things to point out but the two I thought were the best was that they have a walk through room where the offense or defense can line up on a turf lined field facing a massive screen run by like 6 projectors that puts the other team your playing on the screen so players can line up and walk through game plans. Really cool. The best thing was these sensory deprivation tanks. They are like giant glowing clams, players can go into them and float for relaxation and treatment. I put my hand in one and the water felt amazing, hard to describe the texture but salt was coming off my hand for the rest of the day. There was several of these tanks, also a bunch of sleep pods, gaming room, lounges, crazy gym, I have some pretty cool photos. Very solid facilities. You can see how this has an impact on recruiting and how far UCF has to go. Of course Nebraska has a massive head start but good to see what we can get to one day, i know we will.
- Game Atmosphere: They clearly know what they are doing. Everything is on point from the music to the traffic control. Fans were very loud. I always thought the loudest I have heard at a game was at Arrowhead, this gave that experience a run for its money. Fans are loud, 90k+, they are not messing around, they are engaged in every play from start to finish, you can tell how much this means to them. Terrance Crawford led them out of the tunnel with his championship belt on his shoulder. I am a big boxing fan so this was cool to see. One odd thing... they did bring back an old tradition for this game, they give everyone a red ballon when they enter the stadium and the fans have to hold it until the first score and then they let them go. 90k+ red balloons after the first score, they were like the IT balloon (lots of "we all float down here jokes"), those things were floating around for the rest of the game, thought it was odd they were allowed to do this, you would think some environmentalist would have stopped that. Some cool photos though, cool to see just seems aggressively anti-environment.
- Dylan Raiola: This guy is the real deal. To see how good he is as a true freshman is scary. I thought all the Mahommes comparisons were silly since he hadnt done anything yet but meeting him and seeing him up close, he can be really special. This is huge for Nebraska if they can keep him for 3 years, Nebraska can be a force in the Big 10 and in recruiting with him at QB. At end of game i was on field and everyone was mobbing him and he came running right at me, didnt realize his parents were right behind me. I got a cool photo of him embracing his dad and his mom crying and brother smiling. Just perfect timing, then the media swarmed. We sent photo to Dylan's parents and they loved it. i thought that was a cool experience.
- T-Shirt Cannon: They had this truck driving on the field with a Gatling gun shooting out t-shirts to the upper deck. It was amazing, be so cool if UCF could do something like that. This thing was shooting shirts out like mad, thought someone was going to get hurt, it was awesome.
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