The day was Sep 10, 2005 when the ‘Horns played the Bucks last year and I was on a nine-hour flight from Chennai to Paris, cut off from the world. Even “Da Vinci Code” could not keep me from thinking about this game.
It was like looking at a fast-paced montage of images on TV; Robert Langdon unscrambling “O’ Draconian Devil” into “Leonardo Da Vinci”; Vince pulls one down and is streaking past the Buckeye Sam linebacker and the safeties for a score; Sir Leah Teabing keeping the mood light with a joke about how a Harvard sculler has never won over an Oxford one; Vince completes a clutch third-down pass to a wheel-route running TE David Thomas…you get the idea…
Without much luck in finding a USA Today at any of the Paris airport concession stands, I was pleasantly surprised to be handed one on the plane from Paris to Cincinnati. Alright! Here we go, I thought. Sports pages… nothing about the game.. Turns out it was the previous day’s edition. Oh, talk about dangling a carrot in front a mule! Thus, I was relegated to playing the game in my own mind for another nine hours.
Landing in Cincinnati, Ohio, clad in burnt orange, was a calculated risk on my part. After all, isn’t fortune supposed to favor the brave? After clearing customs, I dared to ask a baggage handler (wearing an OSU hat) about the game. His reply, “Ah! It was so close last night, we should have won... blah.. blah”. I had heard enough. It was a “W” for Texas. My jet lag was up in vapors just like that. The final segment of my trip from Cinci to Houston was a pleasant one. I got a recap of the game from another fan that was flying back to Texas after bearing witness to this epic classic at the Horseshoe. What an indelible “I was there” moment for him.
Needless to say, I have been counting down to 09/09/06 ever since. That day is now less than three days away. This time, I am watching the game!!
PS: Look for a preview and prediction of this year’s game in the next day or two in a separate post.
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