#60 Toledo

Toledo, OH

Glass Bowl

October 1, 2022

Central Michigan 17 - Toledo 38 (ESPN Recap)

We were not late to BNA on Saturday morning thanks to Sebastian snoozing his alarm six times before mine was set to go off... We rolled out of Nash and flew Delta to Detroit, Michigan. Landed and headed straight south to Toledo, Ohio to maximize time before the game. Ended up being the right decision as we dropped bags at a random Toledo hotel, grabbed drinks (Sebastian’s were handmade, fancy, and expensive), and then got to campus for the tailgate.

Toledo was amazing! Beautiful campus, great energy all around the outskirts of the stadium with dozens of high quality tailgates, ample cornhole, tons of TVs, and even a retrofitted ambulance tailgating vehicle. The weather was perfect for the pregame and game. We made friends with Danie and Brian who have a son on the Toledo O-Line. Brian said he is in for our trip to Old Dominion whenever we plan that one. Sam S sent us a text photo of how to properly pose with the Toledo Rockets mascot, so I took care of business on that one.

I swept Sebastian on two close h2h games of cornhole, he swept me on the shotgun, and we bought tickets on SeatGeek 15 minutes before kickoff and sat midfield 5 rows up again.

The real reason this game was selected as the second in the double-header was so I could see my 2022 favorite player, Lew Nichols III play live again. Lew is nicknamed The Humble Beast and is a workhorse who led the country in rushing in 2021 and is expected to rack up touches and yards this season as well. Unfortunately, he had his worst game of his career in this one as he only got 52 yards on 22 touches and didn’t find the end zone in a Fetty Wap loss. I took two cool sideline photos of Lew. I also took a photo with a relative of his while I was holding the Lew shirt I bought this summer and traveled with (and Lew was in the background on the bench). I brought the shirt with intentions of going crazy with when he scored TDs, but that was not in the cards. Daniel Richardson was frustratingly inaccurate for the Chippewas and it looks like the pass game and run game really miss their two drafted O-Linemen that graduated last year.

Sebastian and I barely lost the 50/50 raffle for $14k, but met the winners while we spent Q3 up in the CMU athletics box with AD Amy. She is amazing and hopefully the Chips will get back on track the remainder of the MAC season.

The Glass Bowl was cool. Talkative and friendly fans. They gave me a #PublicKillers which is like the stadium giving me a warm hug.

A few fans did their best Tony W impression betting against Toledo but rooting like it’s life or death on them to win which never computes for me. Two guys next to us had CMU +7.5 just like I did and went crazy celebrating every big Toledo play (which usually was their QB scrambling). One of them has been to 198 sports stadiums (CFB, NFL, NBA, MLB, college baseball, college basketball). I’ve never heard of anyone track that stat, but it sure sounded impressive up against my 60 CFB stadiums. On our way into the stadium we donated our leftover beers to Nick’s tailgate who yelled back “come back and get ‘em at halftime or after the game…we don’t drink Bud Lite.” Sure enough, we happened to walk by their spot after the game and they handed us back our four beers and one really expensive spiked hand-crafted kombucha that used birds to naturalize the fertilizer for the ingredients.

(2024 edit: we saw 1st round pick on Toledo CB Quinyon Mitchell play. He has 1 tackle and one pass breakup).

It wouldn't have been a game between two MAC opponents without plenty of MACtion: CMU blocked two Toledo punts and still lost by three scores. There was an XP that missed off the upright, the softest targeting call I have ever seen in all the football I've watched, and a CMU drive that featured three 4th and medium conversions and ended with a red zone turnover.

The sky in this one was really beautiful too.

We got lucky on our Lyft back to Detroit and had a farm-to-table dinner at Chartreuse Kitchen, before heeding the advice of all our awesome Lyft drivers and not exploring Detroit on foot to stay alive. Sebastian said he’s in for more obscure games which is like leaving a 5-star review on the weekend I think. Here is a video of #13 on CMU grooving!

EDIT: Toledo won the MAC conference championship in 2022 which means Sebastian and I saw b2b G5 conference championships on consecutive days.