The Furman Paladins had their home opener against the Presbyterian College Blue Hose yesterday. The game was about what we expected – a blowout with Furman winning 45-21. Even so, PC had some real bright spots, and pulled off some amazing plays. The score doesn’t really reflect the level of play that they brought to the game.
Joining us for the game were three of my sisters – Ann, Beth, and Glynda, and Ann and Beth’s husbands Merritt and Eddie. Ann’s kids Sarah and William, and Beth’s kids Blair and Phillip were also there. They had come to see their brother/cousin Josh, a sophomore at Furman, who dressed out for the first time with the team.
This was also the debut of Furman’s new scoreboard, which I derided by calling it the Furman Dumbotron. It looked great, but now we’re subjected to television commercials in the middle of the game. The audio was horrible, and the canned music was worse. Why have this audio clips when we have a band? I hope they get their programming together before the next game.
Speaking of the band, they were absolutely fantastic. It was obvious that there were more of them, and the sound was also much larger. Their opening formation is always the letter “F”. Laura’s comment was that they could now do a Bold Times New Roman, instead of the Helvetica Light that they’ve had to do recently.
The halftime show was even better. They opened with a tribute to Michael Jackson, playing “Thriller.” There were audible groans around us, because everyone is so tired of MJ. However, that all changed when the band started playing. Rather than describe it, here it is on YouTube…
Even the little cut pieces in between plays were great. I’ll looking forward to seeing how this halftime show develops over the year.
A guy dropped by the UFFP tailgate before the game. I think he’s the guy they hired to run the scoreboard and do the “Wofford Pep Band” role (run the canned music). Seemed really closed to folks’ comments asking that music be tasteful and NOT cranked out to the level that distorted the speakers’ sound. I didn’t even bother to bring up the band – I knew the response I’d get. Well, seems his debut was pretty lame. MANY technical gaffs – clips not coming in, coming in too loudly, too close to plays, during plays. Strangely, a relative who is normally aware of such things didn’t notice any of the problems with the audio. I hope Administration gets a lot of … feedback … hehe from fans about it. Subjecting folks to the stuff I heard is really cruel but not-so-unusual punishment.