THE FOOTNOTES

A friend of ours gave us tickets to the Orange Bowl, so we went down to Miami Tuesday night Jan. 2 to see Louisville play Wake Forest. We had preferred parking and Club seats .... the only way to go. Air conditioned, carpetted, clean bathrooms, food and drinks. Pretty nice.

Louisiville fans outnumbered Wake Forrest, but since Wake is the ACC champ we decide to cheer for the Demon Deacons since FSU plays in the ACC. We had to learn their chants and cheers - including "WAKE" ...... "FORREST" ..... "WAKE" ..... "FORREST". Louisville fans sitting next to us asked where Wake was from, we had to tell them - we have no idea!

The coin toss had Arnold Palmer representing Wake, and Muhammed Ali representing Louisville. It was pretty impressive to see 2 legends of our time. Oh yeah .... Dwayne Wade of the NBA champion Miami Heat was also there. The Orange Bowl half time show is legendary, but they could have had some bigger names. We were glad to see Gladys Knight, but American Idol winner Taylor Hicks didn't impress us.

One of the coolest things happened during the the pre-game. Just as the National Anthem finished 3 Navy F-18 Hornets buzzed the stadium. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Just as everyone was singing and cheering the last bit of ".... and the home of the brave ....." they came roaring over the scoreboard at super low altitude in full after burner. It gave us chills .... proud to be Americans.

This was our first Bowl game, but we're sure to go to more after getting a taste of it. It was so much fun, even if none of our teams were in it. We're wishing we could be in Arizona to watch the Gators win the national champoinship Monday night.