Stonybrook 7 - Brown 17

Last Saturday, I took a little break from my studies to accompany my wife to see Brown's 2008 season opening football game against the Stonybrook Seawolves.

We were running late and so we missed the first 18 minutes of the first half. When we got there Brown was already up 17 - 0. So we thought maybe we'd see a blow-out. The stadium itself is tiny when compared to BYU or even Utah State's fields, (It seats 20,000) and I was disappointed to see that there really weren't many people there either (I'd guess around 6,000). The stadium kind of reminded me of Jefferson County Stadium where my high school team played their games, although it was quite a bit bigger than that.

The nice thing about there being few fans was that we could sit wherever we wanted. We decided to sit at the 50 yard line, about half-way up the bleachers for a better view for the first half. When halftime started we moved up to the top row so we'd have back support and the view was even better from up there. The stadium is surrounded by tall pine trees so that even from the top of the bleachers where we were, you can't really see any of the neighborhood around you. It makes it feel like you're playing in the middle of the woods, sort of a lumberjack's field of dreams. There is no jumbo-tron, nor any-kind-o-tron, and if it weren't for the fact that you can watch Brown Football on the Internet I'd question whether there were any cameras aside from those used for football film reviews. The scoreboard does actually display the name of the visiting school instead of just "Visitor" though, so I we're not totally technologically starved. And without the technology you get to enjoy the little things more, like the bell behind the end zone that gets rung every time we score, the Ivy League flag blowing in the wind, the little bits of Ivy intertwined with the big "B" at midfield, and of course the beautiful forest setting.

But back to the game. With just minute left in the first half, Stonybrook had a First and goal from Brown's 2 yard line. Brown stuffed them on 1st and 2nd down run attempts, and then on 3rd down Stonybrook's Quarterback rolled out and tried to dive into the end zone, leaping into the air with the ball held out, only to be smacked right in the chest by a Brown defender. The hit led to a fumble and the end of Stonybrook's scoring chances, and end the half at 17-0.

At halftime we watched Stonybrook's marching band perform while Sara told me how USU's marching band moved around so much more. She also told me that Stonybrook's flag team was tamer than her sister's winter guard routines when they were in elementary school. I always thought of the colorguard as something to be ignored so I hadn't even noticed that they did almost nothing during the performance. (The fact that I think this way of colorguard probably dooms me to have kids in the colorguard some day, so perhaps I'll pay more attention so as to avoid that experience later.) But Brown's band wasn't even a marching band, they ran out onto the field and played their songs without marching, but they were pretty good.

The Brown non-marching band acts silly on the B.

The third quarter was evenly played with neither offense really able to move the ball too well. Brown drove down the field a couple times only to stall inside the 30 and give up the ball after going for it on 4th down or turning it over. At the end of the third I went in search of food but only found ice-cream as everything had already shut down. But being the dutiful husband that I am, I brought that ice-cream, an Awful-Awful (milkshake) and a Super-Chipper (ice cream sandwich made out of cookies) to my wife at the top of the stadium. After I sat down I realized that it was now 17-7. Sara informed me that Stonybrook intercepted a pass and ran it back for the TD. The rest of the quarter resulted in zero points and so I saw my new team win their first game without seeing any scoring in a 17-7 game.

We didn't look too good in that game, and Stonybrook (a State Univerisity of New York school located on Long Island) had just moved up to Division 1-AA last year, so I'm a little worried about our homecoming game Sept 27th against rival Harvard.