football

The major difference between watching a mid-November football match at USC and one in Piscataway is that - for all the threatening clouds and general dampness as a winter - "winter" - storm came through this weekend - one wasn't freezing cold, and slithering away afterwards through sleet and half slouchy puddles.   Other than that, I seem to have moved 3,000 miles to exchange one shade of red for another, and one Scarlet Knight in armor for a Trojan in a helmet cantering decorously round on the handsome Traveler (sorry that there's no picture of him, but my efforts were too blurred - one can't take in cameras "with a lens bigger than a credit card").   Still, the martial side of the Trojan spirit is a vaguely familiar concept after all that RU medievalism, even if it's set a millennium earlier: I would find it very odd to be supporting ducks or badgers or even the Washington Husky (today's guests, beaten 40:17), whom one imagines show off a live canine when they're playing at home, but here just had a guy dressed up in a grey fluffy suit.   I would say that the other big difference, apart from the weather - and, of course, having a marching band big enough to spell out the school's name - is that the team wins - but then, Rutgers came back handsomely against Army, even if, for a while, this was in doubt.  For, yes, I might well have been the only person in the stadium whose eyes kept swiveling round to the screen on which the scores from other college football games were being flashed up (see below), and checking in on Rutgers's fortunes.  Old habits die very hard.  Chop chop.

And yes, that is an Olympic flame ...