Dukes Down South: A Trip to the National Championship Day 2
Day 2
Friday, Jan 6
“What the...Finnick, get off me!” is how I woke up this morning. It wasn’t just me though, every single person in the house that wasn’t in a bedroom was woken up by the rambunctious Australian Shepherd puppy who would quickly establish himself as a master sock-thief.
At this point there was only eight of us there, with the rest of the crew set to arrive late-afternoon. The plan for the day was to explore Frisco, but my stomach got in the way of that. I wasn’t able to eat much on Thursday while I was traveling, so my body decided it would be prudent to gain 20 pounds on Friday to make up for it. I made an egg sandwich and downed a couple doughnuts for breakfast around 11:00, followed shortly by a chicken tender meal from Chick-Fil-A, which I washed down with a double-chicken burrito from Chipotle. Three hours and three meals deep, my stomach was still growling. I know you don’t care what I ate - but for whatever reason that’s what I spent a lot of my day doing.
At 4:00 the championship activities finally began. Our group of four that stuck together for the weekend made our way to Scruffy Duffies, a bar in Plano that served as JMU fan headquarters (actually, every bar in the Dallas metropolitan area served as JMU fan headquarters, because no one from YSU showed up). The whole place was decked out in purple and gold, and they had specialty shots named in honor of our team. Within five minutes of getting there we were raising glasses with Duke Dog shots in them to toast our team. On a related note, what a smart marketing play by the bar! It certainly worked on us, although, I do have to say the Duke Dog was probably the smoothest shot I’ve ever taken with a strong hint of Ginger Ale in it.
NFL Hall-of-Famer and JMU legend Charles Haley made an appearance to sign autographs around 6:00, so we waited in line for about an hour to get a picture with him. I’m not really an autograph person so an hour felt a bit excessive, but with Uber being our only transportation option, we weren’t planning to go anywhere for the next seven hours. So we waited, and got our chance to speak with him for a few minutes. Two of us had him sign our sweatshirts, and we got a group pic (because Instagram) while he jokingly accused one of us of grabbing his ass. He was very affable and seemed to be enjoying our school’s 15 minutes of fame just the same as everyone else, which was surprising but cool to see from a five-time Super Bowl champion.
The rest of our night was spent eating some authentic Texas BBQ which was as good as advertised (pulled pork was the way to go), basking in a sea of purple, meeting alumni, and screaming the fight song once an hour. There are multiple things that happened this night that I would love to write about but can’t for the best interest of all parties involved, but I can say that we got the opportunity to socialize with a few influential members of the JMU community who were beside themselves with delight in how well our university was being represented.