The President’s Suite
You'd think that snagging an invite to your college football team's president's box would be fun. Not so much.
The first thing you should know about attending a football game in an SEC president’s suite is that it’s almost like going to a ball game. Not entirely, but almost.
During the approach it’s indistinguishable from actual college football. You walk toward the stadium among the great unwashed, their softly-glowing grills and icy coolers beckoning. You pass through the familiar sea of brightly-colored banners and sweaty tailgaters, maybe waving at a friend, but no, thank you, you don’t have time to stop for a beer today (well, maybe just a quick JELL-o shot), you have a higher destination.
You reach the stadium and flash your ticket and this is where it begins to diverge from your lived experience. With your special invitation in hand you make your way through a set of the glass doors where they check for your name on the list and the smiling young lady in the crisp (not sweaty) white shirt and blazer hands you your printed name tag and points you toward a bank of private elevators.
You ride up to your prescribed floor and step out into the carpeted, air-conditioned foyer (you are definitely not in the same stadium where you’ve been attending ball games all your life) and another smiling young lady in a crisp white shirt and blazer calls you by name (you’ve forgotten you’re wearing a name tag) and guides you to the glittering Sanctum Sanctorum.
OK, the whole thing is more like a decent business-class hotel and convention center than the Holy of Holies, but then again, maybe that’s what the Holy of Holies is like, anyway.
You know more people here than you thought you might, and you remember that about a third of them are the same folks - other local elected officials, chamber of commerce leaders, non-profit directors, etc. – that you see several times a week. You’re all invited to this game (one of the payout games, not a conference game or a rivalry) because it’s a good idea to keep the whole town-gown thing on a first-name basis.
"No one is supposed to be so uncool as to care the way the 90,000 people on the other side of the tall sheets of glass care."
Another third — VPs, deans, chairs, university foundation giving officers, assorted staff — are there because they have to be there. They’d take a wide berth around campus today if they hadn’t drawn the short straw, and despite their best efforts to the contrary, it shows. That remaining third looks completely at ease, and they should. They’ve been coming here from all over the state since Grandaddy started bringing them as children, and they’re the ones the disinterested second third is here to immerse in shimmering conversation.
The order of day in this room is to project an air of casual disinterest. No one is supposed to be so uncool as to care the way the 90,000 people on the other side of the tall sheets of glass care. Which is a challenge, because you’ve been bleeding the school colors your whole life and some of your best memories happened right out there on those metal benches with the scent of cheap, spilled bourbon evaporating off the hot cement and burning your nostrils.
Speaking of bourbon, there is none. There’s a hot dog station with more fixings than seems appropriate, two buffet lines, an ice cream station, every baked dessert item you can imagine and all the sweet tea, soda (this is a Pepsi campus now, so don’t go asking for a Coca-Cola) you can drink, but if you want bourbon or beer or wine or more JELL-o shots, you’re going to need a friend who will invite you to one of the other suites down the hall.
After you’ve eaten your fill of ice-cream sundaes and shaken all the hands and slapped all the backs you’ll drift over to the stadium-style seating by the glass wall and gaze out upon all those poor souls squeezed-in butt-to-butt, waiting for the sun to fall behind the west stands for some sweet, shady relief. Maybe you’ll look around to see if you can locate some friends sitting in their regular seats and feel sorry for them from your air-conditioned perch.
Then you’ll watch your team march down the field, pounding it out a yard at a time, and they’ll hit a big play and stretch the ball across the line into the end zone and a city full of people (YOUR people) will leap to their feet, screaming and laughing and hugging and the band will play, big and brassy and loud … and you won’t be able to hear a thing on your side of the glass.
And you’ll look around you and there will be some “cheers” and a high five or two and a lot of restrained smiles but most everyone will still be in the buffet line or too deep in conversation to know that WE JUST SCORED and it will occur to you that, yes, being here in the president’s suite, where you have patiently waited to be for a very long time, is almost like going to a ball game.
Not entirely, but almost.
