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| Saturday, October 14 On the road again By John D. Hunter ESPN.com | |||||||||
It makes up half the college football schedule and every team has to face it, like it or not.
Road games are part of the landscape every team has to negotiate during the season and some teams respond better than others. As ESPN's Beano Cook likes to point out, a team can't be considered a national powerhouse unless they can consistently win on the road.
But what are the good and bad parts of playing on the road? Where are the best and worst places to play? Those are some of the questions ESPN.com poised to our pool of college football student-athletes to get a better insight on road games.
After sorting through this week's answers, one thing became clear. If you only see one college football game in your life, go to Notre Dame Stadium.
"Some of the best things about playing on the road is getting to see some of the historic stadiums around the country such as Nebraska, Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Colorado. Some of the worst things about playing on the road is the traveling all day. You really don't get much rest playing on the road especially if it is a day game. Usually you leave on Friday afternoon and depending on where you play, it takes a while to get there. Then we have a walk through when we get there, then go to the movies and watch game film until 10 p.m." Chris Palic, punter Arizona "I enjoy the travel. I like looking out the window of the plane, seeing new places and trying to figure out where we are. The best thing about road games is that you get to visit different parts of the country for free and I try to see as much of the city as I can in a short amount of time. I've also got a lot of friends playing around the country, so it's good to catch up with them as well. The worst part of being on the road is flying back from a game and getting in at three in the morning." Aaron Thompson, Maryland "The best thing to me about road games is being able to see other places other cities. The worst thing about traveling is the ride home after a tough loss, it just seems like the ride is forever and it never ends." Reggie Newhouse, wide receiver Baylor " The best thing about road games is that it always feels good to win on the road and beat an opponent in their own home. The travel is also nice. It's good to get away from school and everything else for a couple days. I'd say the worst thing about road games is the crowd noise that you have to deal with."
"The best part about road games is you get to experience a city that most players have probably never been to. You stay in nice hotels and get first-class treatment. The bad part is you have to adjust to a lot of things you don't have to worry about at home: checking into the hotel, making sure you're not late to meetings, finding out exactly where those meetings are taking place. You have to get familiar with your surroundings. Personally, I hate traveling but I love going to places like Los Angeles and A&M. I like playing in front of hostile environments. It makes you that much more focused." Travis Dorsch, kicker Purdue "Depending on the makeup of a team, road games can be good or bad. Personally, I like road games because it gives me the chance to get away from family and friends and focus completely on the task at hand. At Purdue we try to treat every road trip like a business trip from start to finish. This allows us to leave all extraneous matters behind and focus on winning a ballgame. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not trying to say that playing on the road is more advantageous than playing at home because there are many negatives that go along with being on the road, as well. On the road, the schedule is very compressed, travel can take it's toll on the body, and obviously the confines of someone else's home field are not always friendly. In the Big Ten, it seems like every school has a packed house, rowdy fans, and a whole lot of tradition. This "atmosphere" makes every road trip special." Good/Bad "To pick a best and worst place to play, though, is difficult, and depends greatly on how you define the terms. I would define a great place to play as somewhere that packs the house all the time, has great teams year in and year out, and causes you to strain as a team to come out with a victory. This being said, my favorite place to play is under the golden dome at Notre Dame. A bad place to play, in my opinion, would be somewhere where the fans are scarce and quiet, the team is so-so and coming out with a victory is not only cherished, but expected. This being said, It probably wouldn't be wise of me to tell the nation which school I would fill in this blank." Romaro Miller, quarterback Mississippi "I love playing on the road. There is nothing like going into a visiting stadium and having 85-90,000 people rooting against you. As far as the team goes, we get closer because it is our team against the world. When we prepare for road games we try to simulate crowd noise at practice. We practice our hand signals and stuff like that to get ready for game situations. I am a movie person, so I usually spend my free time on the road watching movies. The coaches let us rent movies in our hotel rooms, so as soon as we head to our rooms, I pick out a good movie to watch to take my mind off the game." Good/Bad "The one stadium I love playing at is Alabama. Once you enter Tuscaloosa, it is just football, football, football. I just remember driving up and seeing all the Alabama fans along the side of the road. Once you get off the bus there, you have to be ready to play. I do not really have a worst place to play, and I hope I never experience a worst place to play! All of the stadiums have different aspects about them that make you like them and not like them, but I have not found a worst yet!" Chris Lepore, free safety Navy "I love everything about road games. The travel, hostile fans, playing in a different stadium, that gets me excited to play. Although my preparation does not change because we are playing on the road, my attitude does. Students are usually pretty rowdy on the road, and that gets me excited. I love it when my team does something good and all of those kids who were talking so much trash don't seem to have anything to say. And at the end of a road game, if we come out on top, there isn't a better feeling when you leave the field knowing that you won that game in the other team's own back yard." Good/Bad "The best place to play on the road is Notre Dame. Notre Dame Stadium has more college football tradition in it than any other place. That stadium has seen so many great players and games throughout the years. When we played there last year I was honored to play on the same field as the four horsemen, and so many other great players did so many years ago. "The worst stadium I've played in is Veteran's Stadium. We play Army there, and the rivalry usually overshadows how bad a venue is to play any type of sporting event. The Astroturf is hard, and it has patches where it covers the baseball dirt. The locker rooms smell, and the stadium is a gray boring circle. At least the spirit of our rivalry overshadows this boring stadium." | |||||||||
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