Final random thoughts from the Rose Bowl.

If you have never been there, the stadium was nice, the setting absolutely, positively, beautiful, and when you walked in under that Rose Bowl sign you could just feel the years and years of tradition oozing into your veins. It was fairly clean, you could see from any seat, and although jammed in sideways, there was a decent amount of knee room in front of you. Pregame they played a video showing the big games, big plays, and the history of the Rose Bowl series. That was quite interesting and for us old geezers, a stroll down football's memory lane. There is nothing like the tradition of the place.

Having said all that though, it definitely wasn't the Horseshoe!!

The concrete is in need of a good face lift. It has less than half the portal tunnels of Ohio Stadium, meaning that I hope I am never in that place in an earthquake. Unlike the 'Shoe, getting out is a long... slow...tedious... process! Of course the lack of tunnels means that if your seat is in the very middle of the section (mine was), you need to climb over about 75 people to get to an aisle and out at halftime if nature calls (She did).

The video board is nothing the size of the one in the Horseshoe, but that didn't keep them from playing, every time there was a break, the dorkiest, dumbest, stupidest TV show commercials produced by some of the same idiots that produce the stupidest shows on "television for dummies". I wasn't the only one shaking my head and muttering Good Grief!

Getting out after the game was a nightmare...there is a huge open concrete storm channel just west of the stadium and the only way to cross that was on a few narrow bridges, which compounded the backup from the tunnels.

And that fabulous view you see on TV...the twilight when the sun sets over the mountains...well if you are down in the stadium you don't see that.

It's a fine place to visit...the Granddaddy of them all...and I would go back again and again in a heartbeat. But for us Buckeyes, used to a special place called the Horseshoe, well, "there's no place like home."

Too often we take for granted the jewel that we have.