Last weekend I checked something off of my bucket list (although I hate the whole concept of a bucket list). Thanks to the hospitality of my niece Sammie, I trekked with my family to an Iowa Hawkeyes football game.

As I have previously written, I always wanted to experience a real football weekend at college. My alma mater, DePaul University, was mostly a commuter school and had no football team. My time “on campus” was held to a minimum.

We arrived early Friday and got a mini-tour of Sam’s apartment and the university campus. One of the highlights was witnessing a woman croon a tune while playing one of several outdoor pianos on campus. How uniquely cool was this?! Whether a dabbler or master, anyone can have a turn.

Another neat thing was purchasing a 13-cent fountain Coke at one of the shops on campus. I later saw another shop advertising 9-cent Cokes. This place was made for me!

We had a relaxing meal at Quinton’s, where we had the entire upper loft to ourselves and then ended the evening with some shopping and ice cream at the Coral Ridge Mall, where we were surprised to see the Hawkeyes hockey team play and beat Northern Michigan.

On game day, we did some indoor tailgating followed by a nice walk to Kinnick Stadium to see the Hawkeyes host Central Michigan. Unfortunately, the Flying C’s edged out the Hawkeyes on a last-second field goal, but the excitement of the game was not lost because of the outcome.

We ended our day at Sam’s Pizza with some great garlic bread and plenty of pizza. At some point, a ping pong ball battle broke out. This was the capper to my belated college weekend experience, and I loved it.

— John Wroblewski, online contributor

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