ATLANTA — It is so loud inside the Georgia Dome you can't hear the Public Address system.
As it was last year with the Alabama-Clemson game, the crowd of about 75,000 fans is split down the middle. It's looks like a pretty even split. A lot of Virginia Tech folks came down from Virginia as well as the short drive over from Alabama.
Even though the crowd looks even, the Bama folks may be a bit louder.
Kickoff is less than 10 minutes away. The pregame stuff is done and both teams are preparing to come onto the artificial turf.
Football Saturday kicks off the party
There is something about college football that will make normal people do abnormal things.
Saturday morning, the Browns — Kin, Beth and their daughter Abby — drove from Harris County to Atlanta. These big Alabama fans did not have tickets to the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic between Alabama and Virginia Tech in the Georgia Dome.
But they wanted to taste college football before driving home and watching the game on television.
Where better to get a taste of it than The Varsity, the cult eatery on the edge of Georgia Tech’s campus.
“We just wanted to marinate in it,” Beth said.
They were far from alone. A lot of folks were in the marinade of football, fall-like weather, food and drink.
The long football winter thawed Labor Day weekend. And thousands of college football fans made their way to Atlanta. Many were wearing the crimson of Alabama and the burnt orange and maroon of Virginia Tech. But there were also plenty of Georgia Tech fans on hand to see the Yellow Jackets open the season with a rout of outmanned Jacksonville State 37-17.
The Varsity and MARTA, Atlanta’s mass transit system, were football melting pots.
Just ask Georgia Tech fan Drew Hayes of Douglasville as he waited to change trains at Five Points on his way to Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“My first train was packed with Alabama fans,” he said. “Everybody was wearing red, and I was just this one little blue hat in the middle.”
Hayes wore a T-shirt declaring that Tech football was: “The best time you will have with 55,000 of your closest friends.”
If Hayes was in an intimate setting at Grant Field, the feeling around the Georgia Dome was totally different.
It was big-time college football with all the trimmings.
The ESPN Gameday crew was there. Which meant college football fans came from near and far to watch a live pregame show Saturday morning.
Lee Corso, an ESPN analyst, played to the crowd, picking Bama to win.
But there were folks in the mass who didn’t have a dog in the fight. One of those was 15-month-old Pat Murphy, who was in a stroller being pushed by his father.
“My first college Gameday,” a sign over his head read.
The little man from Atlanta proudly wore his Georgia Bulldog shirt.
But they came from afar, too.
Weston Gallop is from Tampa, Fla. He was standing about 50 yards from the Gameday set, but he was clearly ready for some football even though he looked a little lost in his Florida Gators hat.
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