Before Sunday night, I did not know what Midnight Madness was. Not knowing quite what to expect I headed to campus around 10:30 p.m. to see what all the buzz was about.
I can tolerate a lot of things. Hell, I’ve sat through about 80 percent of the movie Battlefield Earth but this, was one of the lamer events I have ever attended. You know how in high school whenever there was a pep rally you were excited because you got to skip class? Well this was about the same type of pep rally except I wasn’t rewarded for attending at all.
Walking up to Martinez Athletic Center I saw a 7/11 slushee van and before I got my hopes up, I was disappointed to see that they were only giving out coffee. After walking past the two gentlemen dressed in suits and wearing masks for the two presidential candidates, I was greeted by a group of girls.
The first girls weren’t cheerleaders, I’m not sure what they were but after receiving a half-off voucher for an appetizer at Lee Roy Selmons, I didn’t really give the matter much more thought. Upon walking past the Pepsi stand, I was heartbroken. The table, which I assumed was passing out chicken, was already emptied. I was ushered into the gym and was surprised to find a pretty good crowd of people and had to go up about 15 rows to find a spot.
I’m not a fan of dance but kudos to you if that’s your thing. Having to watch the continuous dance groups do their routine to music I’ve mostly never heard of was painful. If some cheerleaders came out and started doing backflips and all that jazz, I would have been more then happy but with my luck, no such thing happened.
Finally the time came to introduce the basketball teams. It was about as fun as watching the Cleveland Browns be introduced just about anywhere but Cleveland. To my surprise two of the men did backflips that got everyone off guard and the whole place went wild. I did give them a standing ovation because that was about as good as my night got.
After watching the men and women’s team warm up a bit and seeing a few awesome slam dunks, the next event on the agenda was a three point shootout with which a basketball player and a crowd member were teamed up against another player and crowd member.
If you’ve ever watched a three-point shootout on TV, those guys are firing those balls off like bullets since they’re timed. This was the complete opposite as it took about a minute for each team to shoot the ball once.
Maybe it was because I don’t like pep rallies or maybe it’s because watching basketball players warm up and have their named called isn’t my cup of tea. Either way, next year I’ll make sure to be asleep by 11:30.
Connor Anthony can be reached at connor.anthony@spartans.ut.edu.
Connor I appreciate you attending the Midnight Madness event. I am just a regular student here who happened to danced at the event. (My team was amazing if I do say so myself) I believe that though your comments were honest and you admitted you did enjoy some parts you did not highlight the great parts.
From where I was the room was packed and with all the students who say we have no school pride I found that this event said the opposite. It was great to see different students from different organizations all out at night.
Lastly, I hope you take some time to go speak with the basketball team and or the group of students that plan midnight madness and provide some suggestions on how to improve this event for people like you.
By the way all the songs that were played are Top 100 which most of the dance teams assumed that members of the audience would know. I’m not sure what you wanted them to play? We don’t have a Rock Metal Dance Team! LOL