8.1.09 (dated this way until I catch up)

Ticket to the 2009 NCAA National Championship Game- $175
Ticket for a flight to Berlin- $487
Randomly finding a fellow American who was willing to spend over 3 hours trekking all over Berlin so that we could eventually watch the game on a laptop with a 3X5 window-Priceless

After class on Thursday, Kenny, Layne and I all went out to SchloBstraBe, the shopping district, desperate to figure out a way to watch the game. We’d been looking into different leads since we arrived in Berlin, but everything was turning out to be a dead end. Our first direction was to find out a place that would broadcast the game via television. We found a few leads, American sports bars mostly, but none of them were open from 2 AM to 6 AM, the time in Germany the game would be airing. This was a long drawn out process in itself. We then turned our eyes to trying to find someway we could watch it via the internet. We tried all sorts of internet bars, such as the special Dunkin Donuts upstairs room (closes well before midnight) and even considered sitting outside one of the hotspots after it’s closed (couldn’t confirm the internet would keep flowing when they shut off the lights…and it was REAL cold that night). Fast-forward to me sitting in the internet considering buying an O2 internet stick (way overpriced, and just didn’t feel good about buying it without researching other places first) and asking a student aged girl in German if she was done using the in-store laptop (I was gonna use it for internet to try and FIND a place WITH internet) and she responded to me in English! As it turned out, her name’s Mimi and she’s going for her doctorate here in Berlin, at the Technical Institute in North Berlin. She offered to us to use her O2 stick, which was extremely trusting on her part since she just met us. She went with us to get my laptop (First trek across Berlin) and then to her apartment to get the O2 stick (Second trek across Berlin), only to find out that the stick doesn’t pick up internet fast enough to watch streaming live video. We were about to make the trek back to a 24 hour internet bar we passed on the way to her apartment (not an ideal place to watch the game) when Mimi realized that we could go watch it at her school, where they have an internet lab, to which she has a key for. Enter our third trek. After hiking through the C O L D for a very long time, we get to the Institute. This was close to our sixth hour of searching and trekking. Mimi, the one who speaks close to the least German out of all of us, had to convince the security guard that she was there, at 2 in the morning, with three random Americans, for official business. The two six packs Kenny held under his arm didn’t really help our case. Anyway, we finally got in, and got the loaded the game on a computer, only to find out the computers lacked sound! AGGGHHHH! Now realize, for every obstacle I detail, there were probably two or three that I left out. Luckily Mimi had access to her own laptop, and we were able to pull that up. Now as you may or may not know, Mac’s have horrible maximum sound, so we realized we wouldn’t be able to cheer after the plays without missing what the announcer said, and the screen being so small, we wouldn’t be able to jump up and down without missing the replay. Well, we got a cure to both these problems, in a way… Apparently Fox had this “Enhanced” way of watching the game, where one can watch 4 or 5 different camera angles at once. This seems like it would have been a pretty cool experience, if we could have gotten more than one camera view, and if that view was anything but the quarterback camera angle. No replays, no commentary, no sound but the sound on the field. Not even any commercial breaks. We got to see what it looks like for the players during these breaks. They often just stand around waiting for that guy with the red hat to get back off the field so they can resume. So, with no replays and with no commentary, our problem of “missing it” due to celebration was, in a way, fixed. We got around this next problem by loading the Itunes broadcast of the game and listening to that, only about 90 seconds delayed from our visual. We eventually fixed that too by delaying our visual by roughly the 90 seconds, to where it was within maybe 5 seconds. Other than the inconveniences of a micro screen and trying to stay awake with jetlag and the fact that we were staying up all night for a second time that week, the most difficult obstacle to overcome/accept was that the camera angle was…unique. If Tebow bombed it down the field for an amazing catch by #1 Percy Harvin, we would get the pleasure of seeing…Tim Tebow’s facial reaction to the play. The camera angle was such that it wouldn’t attempt to follow the ball more than 10 yards from the place of the snap. So watching the game was…less than we thought it would be. Honestly it was really hard to get into it at 5 in the morning with only one other person awake (sorry Kenny, the world has to know). Layne and I would attempt going crazy after a play, but it felt lackluster. So, what are my conclusions? What are my main thesis points?
• It is much easier to be a Gator when it is convenient. The whole “Gator Pride” thing only extends so far. I hate to be the downer on all those who would like to see themselves as die hard Gator fans, but a large amount of this fervor comes from the ease of being a fan. Now, some would argue that they were Gator fans even before Florida was a powerhouse, but I’d argue that this point actually makes my case. When “oh man my team isn’t that good but I’m gonna stick by them” is all it takes to be “hardcore”, being a Gator is still largely ruled by convenience. Let’s take Kenny for example. He’s pretty die hard. Painting your room orange and blue would qualify as “hard core” behavior to me. Kenny gave up trying to find a place after just two or three hours of searching. I started to get really frustrated with him because his actions were so not matching up with his “oh, I’m the most hardcore fan” attitude. I’m not bashing Kenny, because I must admit getting stopped every time we thought we had a viable option was SO disheartening. I realized that Gator fans’ excitement is largely based on things like pack mentality and access to background details of the game. We lacked both in Berlin, and thus I was able to see this. I found myself fighting to get into the excitement of our win since I wasn’t able to access info on the specific details, something that I always enjoyed at UF. Most of my fellow Gators can relate to the enjoyment of a good copy of The Alligator after our victories on the football field.
• My sense of accomplishment came not from seeing the game (it wasn’t much of a game to be honest. It came from, as my mother put it, finding success in an endeavor in a foreign city. After being successful in such an undertaking, I feel I can take on other tasks that involve both a complicated problem and a complicated solution.
• God is in control of things, even down to the relatively small things, like a football game. If we hadn’t have gotten to see it, He would still be just as much in control, but our getting to see the game against all odds confirmed that WHEN God wants something done, He gets it done. Now to just learn to rest in HIS control and HIS decision making on what He wants done and what He wants left undone.