Homecoming is the most iconic weekend of the fall semester — you had all these big plans to go to the tailgate, to cheer for the team, to get some spirited face paint going on, to collect some free college gear, etc., and hopefully you got to do all that! You may have been totes ready to rumble and rally, but maybe there were a few things you didn’t expect:
1. Red, so much red.
Well we are Big Red aren’t we? There isn’t another day more appropriate to wear all the red clothing you own, just as there isn’t any other day where more people are garbed in all the red they own. We are Cornellians. We wear red. Or at least that’s probably what Bucknell thought when they saw the thousands of us all in the same color scheme.
2. Touchdown.
Maybe you didn't expect those scored by the team either, but I'm talking about Touchdown the bear. Where else would our faithful mascot be on the big day? Obvs at the tailgate before the game — hopefully you were decked out in school spirit with your Cornell face tattoos and Big Red sunnies because it was the perf photo-op for an adorable game-day shot with the Bear! If not, don’t fret, he’s always around somewhere.
3. Those alumni who seem to have never left.
Despite the fact that they are very familiar with our past Homecoming game records, the alumni who return for Homecoming probably had even more team spirit than us current students. Maybe you got a good look at that 28-year-old alum who came back to get drunk at Schoellkopf and pretend like he never graduated; more than likely this will be you one day.
4. That frenzy to buy and sell last minute Homecoming concert tickets.
You may have stressed about not getting a ticket for the concert so late in the game or about having an extra ticket, but the proof is on your Facebook newsfeed — you know Homecoming just happened when the latest posts are about buying or selling Passion Pit tickets. Plans changed, people overestimated their stamina, and nobody ever really wants to wake up at 9am to buy those tickets, so you can almost always rely on that eleventh hour exchange.
5. Getting lost in the darkness of Barton Hall during the concert.
Yay for music and cool lights and happy people! You may have discovered some hidden claustrophobia mid-mosh mid-concert, and you may have lost your friends in the sea of people, but still, the concert probably alleviated some of that PTSD you had from that awful three-chair-to-a-long-table set up for finals that we’re so used to in Barton.
6. Realizing that even though we don’t go to a Big Ten, you developed a newfound appreciation for the Big Red.
Who cares if our game didn’t get aired on ESPN or there wasn’t some hoity-toity sports announcer to read off all our plays? What really matters is that we still got ourselves to Schoellkopf to support the Big Red, and that we got those few hours off from holing up in the library, so now we can go back to stressing about all those prelims that start this week…
