September 13th, 2008 Gophers Vs Montana State Bobcats

I am not a big sports fan but I am a fan of beer and hotdogs.  We were invited to the Gophers Montana State game in the Metrodome, free tickets and t-shirts.  Had the beer and hotdogs been free the decision would have been a no-brainer.  We parked in the midst of a massive tailgate party $15 parking (versus $20 for the tailgater’s) but, did have 6 people packed comfortably into a van.  We were in the nosebleed section upper level row 24, endzone.  Had it just been a couple of us we would have been in a lower section near the 50 but, opted to stay in the thin atmosphere.  I shot a few hundred photos, I was forced to underexpose them a couple stops shooting 1/640 second exposures at 300mm f5.6 then pushing them in post processing.  The big debate always comes if I should pick 20 to keep and delete the other 300 before archiving them but, past experience has shown I typically back them all up.  Anyhow while I have plenty of shots of kicks, passes, crossing endzone’s, tackle’s, my favorite was a few minutes left in the second quarter when Demetrius Crawford (for the Bobcats) caught the previous kickoff (after the Gophers scored a TD) on the endzone, and ran it 100 yards to the other endzone (captions below).  Then during halftime the band did some cool looking military insignia type shapes (no clue how they do that, it’s not like building crop circles in the dark but, still), then tossed in a random photo or two of someone about to get hit at high speed or someone being crunched.  Two bad looking injuries occurred where the player lies motionless, and later is helped to hop off the field, personally If I have an injury that I can’t put weight on I’ll ask for the stretcher service every time.

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