About 1,500 Kansas University fans bundled against subfreezing wind chills Monday at Memorial Stadium to watch on a giant TV screen a game played indoors hundreds of miles away in a warm Gulf Coast city.
“This is the coldest I’ve been in three years,” said Andrew Shoemaker, a recent transplant to Lawrence from Tempe, Ariz.
But the newly hired KU employee said he jumped at the chance to help out during the televised broadcast of the KU-Syracuse game that was shown on the stadium’s Megavision.
“They asked for volunteers, and I said I have to be part of this,” he said.
That’s how most everyone felt at the stadium despite the crushing loss to Syracuse.
Fans, led by the KU Pep Band, whooped and cheered their Jayhawks and booed and hissed the Orangemen on the mammoth screen. It was like an outdoor viewing of “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“We live in Topeka, and we wanted to be where the action was,” Carrie Jo Wilson said.
And most fans were buried under KU blankets, hats and sweaters. Not so for Jim Davis and his son Brandon Davis, 11, who traveled from Independence, Mo., thinking that the game was going to be shown inside Allen Fieldhouse.
When they realized their mistake, they hustled to get some warmer clothes, and all Jim could find was a baby blue “Rockies” sweatshirt.
But he bleeds Jayhawk blue and gets a lot of grief for it in his hometown.
 See photo galleries from Lawrence and New Orleans, video highlights and full stats, post-game audio, animated plays at KUsports.com |
“At home, I put up my KU flag when they play MU. I have to protect my KU flag,” he said.
KU officials said the fieldhouse wasn’t used because it wasn’t hooked up to cable.
For Mandy Wilcox, an assistant manager of KUstore.com, the loss meant she couldn’t break out the national championship sportswear that was ready to be sold.
Before the game started, the sales crew was doing a brisk business selling KU paraphernalia, even last year’s Final Four shirts.
“It’s all going pretty fast,” she said.
After the Jayhawks’ rally fell short, fans were dejected.
“It’s kind of like an ending. I’m a senior, and it’s a real empty feeling,” said Brett Gray of Overland Park, who walked quietly alone down Jayhawk Boulevard.
