We’ve been waiting with building anticipation. No small amount of money was spent on “purple” Christmas presents and other preparations for this game. Pep rallies have gone on for three days but, due to work schedules, we couldn't catch up with the group until this morning’s breakfast at the Westin Galleria for a few hundred KS fans. To say Pops opened a number of purple holiday gifts is an understatement …sweatshirt, polo, pullover, sweater vest, etc….all royal Kansas State purple. If you’ve ever heard the volume of a marching band at its most enthusiastic then you know they can be heard for several city blocks. Now imagine that entire enthusiastic band inside the Westin ballroom with us at breakfast and you have the rock-the-hotel-down-crack - the-chandeliers sound that accompanied our morning meal. Not many folks know that Pops was the football mascot, Willie the Wildcat, (part of the cheerleading team) for three years while attending Kansas State. So I was tickled when the “incumbent” Willie sat with us for breakfast. One great photo was taken of these two Willie’s together.

Later in the day, after a Christmas present exchange and dinner with stepdaughter and her significant other, we all piled in the car to head for Reliant Stadium for “the GAME”. Over 52,000 Rutgers and Kansas State fans filled the stadium with an estimated 40,000 of those from Kansas. Another 2,000 were Kansas fans from the Houston area. It was a sea of purple all cheering and rocking and yelling with such fervor. Rutgers fans numbered approximately 10,000 and though smaller in number, they watched their team absolutely run over our Kansas wildcats. It wasn’t pretty. In fact the guys described it as downright ugly. And painful to watch. But we had fun and now, well, we have all these purple clothes.