College football, gotta love it!

For those of you who don't know us, I (Shawn) live on the beach in St. Pete Beach, FL.  I moved down here from Minneapolis 1 1/2 years ago.  Andy's in Robbinsdale, MN, and Matt splits his time between St. Paul and Los Angeles, CA.  The big adventage of living in Florida is the ridiculous amount of college football happening w/in a few hours of my home.  During the past two seasons I've seen games at Florida, Florida State, Miami, USF, the St. Petersburg Bowl, Champps Sports Bowl, and the Outback bowl.  Over Thanksgiving we made it up to the Georgia Tech/Georgia game and decided to see our hometown Vikings play the Falcons.  Watching both games I saw no comparions between college and pro football.  The atmosphere at Bobby Dodd Stadium and the tailgating was amazing.  The traditon of the Wramblin' Wreck drive out onto the field and the yelling out "to hell with Georgia" part of the Wramblin' Wreck song was simply awesome. The atmosphere outside the Georgia Dome and tailgating was stale.  Inside I'd have the say the fans were pretty pumped up, but the game lacked a great deal in time honored tradition.  Too new, too artificial, too plastic...The best part of the game for me was seeing former Gopher Marcus Sherels on the field for the Vikings.  Of all the advantages of living in FL for college football, I'm also suffering from the one biggest disadvantage, distance away from TCF Bank Stadium and my beloved Gophers.  Thank God for the Big Ten Network...