Finally I Can Graduate In Peace

This column is essentially self-serving and egotistical. I'm not writing about an important political issue or a valid campus concern. I'm writing because I was able to rush the field Saturday at the football game and now my college experience is complete. Until now, the approaching completion of my 120 credits hung like a court date circled on the calendar. I felt I had not "done it all." Now I am content and can move onto whatever comes next.

During my college search, I narrowed my options down to the University of w and UConn. My aversion toward attending my state school, being from New Haven, mirrored the reasoning used by anyone who had attended a marginally-big high school: because 'everybody' goes there and I wanted something different - that, and I didn't like the notion of my parents popping in weekly if I was so close to home. It's also the reason I didn't go to Yale. I've come to realize parents are fired up to get rid of their graduating high school senior far too readily. Their mock anguish exists only to saddle with the obligation to buy them nice things when they become successful.

I went on my college visit to Vermont with the latent intention of making it my final choice. Anything I found attractive about the school, I would have overrated. Any deficiencies, I would have depreciated. "Oh, it's overrun by smelly hippies? I heard they were easy-going people."

Upon arriving at the school, I gave the town a cursory glance and started in search of the football stadium - a staple of every college tour assessment. Upon being notified by a confused undergraduate that the football stadium we were trying to find didn't exist, my college decision was made. It was one of those deal-breakers that wasn't dismissible: like a girl telling you she's really into "Saw III" or a guy canceling a first date an hour before he's supposed to cook for a girl because he "just doesn't feel like it."

So Storrs it was and it proved to be a good time to jump on the Huskies' bandwagon. The team moved up to Division I-A in 2000 and has had one of the swiftest rises to prominence in football history. They attracted the interest of a major conference - the Big East - by 2002, had joined that conference by 2004 and were awarded a bowl invitation in their first year in the conference - an impressively fast growth spurt on anyone's chart. Still, while they hovered on the edge of college football's upper echelon, they still hadn't made that prized kill; they weren't yet "made men."

As Hunter S. Thompson once professed "The Edge ... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

The Huskies went over that edge when they toppled No. 11-ranked South Florida Saturday. I went over that edge when I vaulted 10 feet over a 300 pound, steroid-addled security guard who had a scared freshman in a full nelson. The energy in the stands was palpable. Strangers were high-fiving and cracking jokes and making sure their neighbor would give them a boost onto the wall. A heavy rain has a harmonious effect on a group and probably also accounts for part of the reason the squad pulled off these last two wins. In sports it's said that weather is the great equalizer and it definitely did its part in minimizing the handicap caused by the team's usually-inferior speed. But the effect of the crowd also can't be dismissed. These past two weeks were a statement. The Huskies, like true alpha-dogs, marked their territory. The Rent (Rentschler Field) is officially a war zone, an unstable environment for opposing forces.

The game ended in the fashion of all memorable upsets, with a conclusion that had fans delirious with anticipation and with a nervous, "what's going to happen next?" feeling. The crowd descended onto the field with a mob mentality. This was my moment. I started towards the front, shoving people out of the way like a self-indulgent passenger of the Titanic trying to get to a life boat. The sight of the security guard grabbing students by the chest only reminded me to, in the words of Van Halen, "hit the ground running."

Let's face it - aside from capsizing the goal posts, the actual rushing of the field is just a glorified exercise in insanity. After about age six or seven it stops being socially acceptable to jump around screaming in joy.

But the sense of achievement doesn't derive from the actual act but rather the significance of the occasion. The football team has finally stepped onto the national stage. They earned their first-ever ranking in the respected polls - at least all that lobster those players are being fed at their fancy new facility now seems justified for the time being - and I got to rush the field. Now I'm okay with wrapping up my stay on this farmland, although that's probably only for the time being.

Staff Columnist Alex Schaefer is a 7th-semester accounting major. He can be contacted at Alexander.Schaefer@UConn.edu.