Duke vs. Army – September 25

I think there should be a constitutional amendment that bans college football games from being scheduled in daytime hours in the Southeast in the month of September. I guess I can dream, but fat chance of that happening as TV basically dictates to these institutions of higher learning when they will play. So we had the absurdity of this game (kickoff at 3:00 PM) being played in Durham, NC under sunny skies and 96 degrees Fahrenheit. Great football weather! All because ESPN-U decided to televise this thing.

We curtailed our tailgate a bit and didn’t arrive in the parking lot until noon. There was a pickup truck across from our space that had an entire payload of nothing but ice, but that was completely melted down by 1:30 or so and the resultant stream dribbled into our tailgate. In that heat, one doesn’t really feel like eating or drinking, so I can’t recall anything else memorable about that tailgate.

The best part of the day was the pregame appearance by the Golden Knights, the Parachute Team of the United States Army. Impressive stuff and I was able to capture some decent shots of the delivery of the game ball.

Duke played probably their worst game of the season, gift-wrapping this game to Army with two early interceptions, digging a hole they were never able to recover from, and playing as listlessly as we all felt in the heat in a 35-21 final that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score indicated.

Here is a Flickr slideshow of shots taken on September 25, 2010 at Wallace Wade Stadium during the Duke-Army game: