You see this Matthew Stafford news about playing in Australia and it takes me right back to the late 90s when we would pack into Sanford Stadium on those Saturday afternoons and the whole place would just shake. I mean literally shake. You could feel it in your bones standing on those old aluminum benches before they put in the chairbacks. Remember the 1997 game against Florida when we stormed back and the east end zone stuudent section sounded like a freight train coming through? That stadium had a soul back then. It was loud because it mattered, not because some DJ was pumping in noise over the speakers. You had the hedges and the railroad tracks and that old school scoreboard that would barely keep up with the action. Now these kids coming in for voluntary workouts in June have no idea what it felt like to walk through those gates on a crisp November evening when the lights were on and we were playing somebody like Auburn or Tennessee. The whole place would be buzzing by the time the band finished the pregame show. Stafford throwing passes in Melbourne is cool and all but it makes me realize how far we have drifted from the days when Sanford Stadium was the loudest place in America because of the people not the production. You cannot manufacture that kind of atmosphere with a Jumbotron and some fireworks. Those old benches in the north stands where my dad and I used to sit, you could feel every single person in that crowd moving as one. That is what I miss the most. The game has changed so much that I barely recognize what we are watching sometimes.