No Way In Hell, West Virginia

A wise man once said, "That John Denver's full of shit, man". He couldn't be more right. WRAS went to Morgantown for the game and here is long-awaited account.

We get into Pittsburgh and jump in our sweet-ass Dodge hemi minivan and get on the road. After checking into the hotel, The Best Western Mountaineer Inn next to Sheetz (largest gas station in the world and the only one in Morgantown I guess plus they have 40 oz so we picked up some of those), we head downtown to High Street. We went into a sports bar called The Sports Page. Good place and there are a handful of other AU fans in there but most people are watching the Phillies-Rays game. Supposedly, the place is famous for their wings and we got some. They were good but the highlight (or downfall evidenced the next morning) was the pepper jack cheese stuffed soft pretzel. It was damn good but tore my ass up the next morning.

Either that or the freaking smorgasboard of free drinks Morgantown has to offer...

No wonder this place is the #1 party school in America. They are proud of it too as we saw several people with shirts that stated it. As we're walking out of The Sports Page, three guys cross our paths and holler for us to come with them. They seemed like good guys, our age, and one of them was from Huntsville. We're game, so we follow them to a place called Chasers. In between a bouncer is telling us that they are offering free drinks for a $5 cover. The place doesn't have a sign and you can't see in the windows, plus the bouncer looked a little gay so we just kept walking. Anyway, back to Chasers, there is a line outside and the place has a tiny door next to a bank. Once I pay my cover I walk in and the bouncer asks to frisk me. He made all of us put our hands against the wall and spread 'em, where the fuck are we going?!?! The bar has steps that lead underground and as I set foot inside there is loud dance music and a lot of red on the walls. Blood? Anyway, the bar manager sees us and starts talking to us and is glad we came all this way from Auburn. We find out that this place is offering 50 cent pitchers and sure enough, everyone is walking around with cups and pitchers in their hands. So we get our beers and walk to the main area. It's a huge room, kind of dingy but there are a ton of people there and it has a cage for people to dance in and a stripper pole. The place is filled w/ hood rats (my name for WVU guys who wear nothing but hoodies) and girls dressed in 80s clothes. We're talking short shorts, pumps, tight jeans, suspenders and pimp hats. We're dancing a little bit, drinking our pitchers and watching the crowd when a couple of us go to the bar. I get a phone call from one of my friends saying he got kicked out and doesn't know why. We've been talking to the manager who gave us some free beers since the pitcher specials ran out and he says he'll get our friend back in. We see a couple of gigantic WVU offensive lineman shaking their asses and grabbing any girl within their reach. And at the end of the night the DJ plays a techno version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads".


We wake up the next morning hung over and I can barely breathe. It's like I have 75% lung capacity or something. Plus, III decides to turn the hotel mini-fridge's temperature all the way down and the Gatorade I was dying for is nothing but frozen slush. Great way to start off the day. At least the beers in there didn't explode. We head back downtown and decide to eat lunch at a place called the Boston Beanery (where Auburn people are meeting up). Cool place but smokey and the hair of the dog that bit us the night before isn't working. But we start to feel better thanks to steak sandwiches with ranch dressing. Turns out there are two Beanerys and we're at the wrong one. We head towards the stadium and find the other Beanery and park in the lot where we can leave our car and tailgate if we want to. Industrious as one of my friends is, he goes into the CVS next door and finds they have cold beers in singles. So we get a few of those and start tailgating outside of the Beanery. Meet some cool Auburn people and Ben Tate's family is tailgating in the lot as well (but they call him Benny so that's what I'm calling him from now on). Two AU grads from Atlanta are parked near us and we start talking. Turns out one of them has my brother's old Gadsden Tiger hat from 10 years ago which leads me into this story...

It's the 1999 AU-Florida game. My brother is 16 years old and is staying with me for the weekend. He's never hung out with a bunch of college people before and is having a good time at our tailgate. Some friends, including III, are about to do some shots of Jim Beam before heading into JHS. My brother is with them and they offer him one. He proceeds to turn the plastic liter bottle up and has downed half of it before he stops. Pandemonia ensues as that is some tough juice right there. About 30 minutes later we are in the stadium and my brother has lost it. He can barely stand up, he is d-r-u-n-k. This was the most crowded the student section has ever been except for this circle around my brother and this other unknown girl who looks to be in even worse shape than my brother. They are leaning on each other and puking, puking and leaning. My brother has this orange hat that says "Tigers" real big and "Gadsden" below it. He's using it to wipe his mouth and occasionally puke in. Eventually, it's just sitting next to him and this dickhole Florida fan (they're beating us pretty good by now) runs by yelling and picks up the hat and puts it in. Of course, puke goes all over him and we laugh and laugh. Long story short, when my brother finds out the next morning his favorite hat is gone he's pretty upset, but what can you do. Back to Morgantown, we're talking about this game and one of the Atlanta guys mentions how he has an orange Gadsden Tiger hat he found after that game. Unbelievable! I told him what happened to it and he said it didn't seem like it had been puked in. Well, he still has it and is going to ship it to me. Wait until I give my brother this hat back after almost 10 years. What a wild ride that hat has been on. Is this my "War Eagle Moment"? I doubt AU will make a commercial out of this story though.

It's about an hour before kickoff and we've been having a great time and WVU people have been so nice the whole time. Little did we know what we would experience next. We walked towards the stadium and it was like everyone in yellow had flipped a switch that said, "Get pissed". People are chanting, "asshole" at us constantly and telling us to go home.

That's not even the worst of it, once in the stadium I can't even count the number of times we were told to "fuck off" or "go the fuck back to Alabama" or "orange and blue fucking sucks". It seems they would rather be beligerant towards the road team than watch the game. Three times someone got in my face and cussed me out. One of my friends got pushed by a girl. An Auburn guy got kicked out of the game and pushed down the steps by the omnipresent state troopers who constantly patrol this section. The guy that got pushed down the steps was staying in our hotel and he told me about it. He got kicked out of the game twice by buying another ticket and deciding to sit in the same seat, the troopers busted him and kicked him out again. You know how after Auburn home games, all the nice people in their yellow t-shirts come out to "guard the field" so no one will rush it? At WVU, they bring out armed riot police with billy clubs and German shephards. They probably think that's normal.

See this link for a little of the "asshole" chant from the typical Mountaineer...
http://deadspin.com/5069143/fat-drunk-and-stupid-is-no-way-to-go-through-west-virginia-son

Here' their band director's fat ass dance he did towards the end of the game...


Needless to say, we didn't hit the town after the game out of fear for our lives and I'll never go back to Morgantown again.