A FOOTBALL MOM'S JOURNAL
2006-2007
By Jenna Gonzalez
NORTHERN ILLINOIS
It was so exciting preparing once again for OSU football. We had our hotel reservations (Holiday Inn on Lane Avenue), the coolers were packed, the food prepared, and we were ready to start the season. I can remember that as the game was going on, I was so worried about the defense. I would hold my breath every time they went in. Well, by the end of the game I was breathing quite easily. They did a great job, and I felt good about our team for this year.
Tony had a few catches, so that was good. All the players stayed healthy, and that was the best part of the game.
The most special part about this game was that it was the first game my dad was ever able to go to. My mom passed away in April, and he was never able to go to a game because he was always gladly taking care of her. To see the smile on his face was the second best part of the game.
We ended our night at Smith & Wollensky’s, one of Tony’s favorite spots.
TEXAS
I couldn’t believe the hype this game was getting. We had quite a big group of people heading out for the game (15), and just getting organized with tickets, airfare, hotels, etc. was kind of hectic. But the day finally came. We left Cleveland around 8:00 p.m. and arrived in Texas around 10:15 p.m. local time. After arriving at the hotel, we decided to venture to 6th Street. I could not get over the incredible hospitality that we encountered in the city of Austin. Those people truly embodied the whole “Southern hospitality” thing.
On game day, we mostly just went to different bars looking for the Ohio State fans. We ended up at one that was ALL OSU fans (can’t think of the name . . . it was sponsored by the Varsity Club, though) and had a great time. We walked to the stadium and were never harassed at all. I’m telling you, these Texas fans were beyond nice. It made me wonder if we could ever be as gracious as them. Even after the loss, they were so nice to us.
The game itself was truly amazing. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn I was at a bowl game. The fact that Tony had his best game ever in a nationally televised prime time game was unbelievable. The attention he got as a result of that game was unbelievable. His popularity soared. All of a sudden, there is a bit more pressure for all of us.
This was a beautiful day. The weather was perfect, Tony had a good game, and one of my cousins from Cincinnati was able to come with her family. My dad made his second game, and we discovered the wheelchair is the ONLY way to get him to/from the games. He’s 80 years old, and the walk is a bit too much for him from the Holiday Inn. Once again, we had our tailgate set up at the hotel, and we went to Smith and Wollensky’s after the game. When we walked in, Tony’s #11 jersey was hanging up behind the table where we are always seated. That was a very nice gesture on their part!
PENN STATE
I would have to say this was one of the most stressful weeks prior to a game for me. We had 26 people coming for the game . . . some had tickets, some did not. I was preparing so much food all week and was just getting so excited for the game. We ended up having a wonderful time. There were no injuries, Tony played well, and we won. We enjoyed our time with the family and friends who came, and we ended up once again at Smith & Wollensky’s. I slept like a baby that night because I was exhausted from the week’s preparations.
IOWA
This game was also lots of fun. The entire state of Iowa was up for this game. Though the fans were not as nice as the Texas fans, I would have to say they were not bad. We flew to Chicago, spent the night there, and got on the road around 9:00 a.m. and drove to Iowa City. It took us just over three hours. Again, it was a beautiful day for a football game.
When we got to Iowa City, we tailgated with lots of the parents of the players. That was so much fun and something we decided we would have to do again. Thanks to the efforts of the Datishes and the Denlingers, we had a great time.
The game itself was great for the team (no injuries). It was a victory, and it was a great game for Tony because he got “Player of the Game.” Once again, he did so well on a nationally televised prime time game; and once again, it means tons of publicity.
I remember very distinctly sitting down after that game at home and meditating on why God has been so good to us. At first, you’re just ecstatic that your son is offered a scholarship to play football at OSU. Then, you are excited if he actually gets in for a play. Then you can’t believe that he is playing more and making plays. Then you can’t believe he is a starter. Then he’s on ESPN, in Sports Illustrated, always in the newspaper, etc. It really can get overwhelming, and I honestly don’t know how he handles the pressure. And I just keep asking myself, “Why is God so good to us?”
BOWLING GREEN
This game was nice to watch because it wasn’t quite so stressful. We had about eight of us there to watch Tony. We did our normal tailgating in the room and pretty much just enjoyed the day. We were saddened during the game to see David Patterson and Kurt Barton get injured. Those are two boys who are special to us because they were both in Tony’s recruiting class. There are so few of them left, and so we have become close to the ones that are still there. It’s awful to see any of these boys get hurt (on either team).
We tried a new restaurant after the game. It was called Z Cucina. It was very good, and we had a great time.
MICHIGAN STATE
This was a pretty crazy week because Tony had been featured in a cooking demo on ESPN for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Then Ed and I had been featured in an article in the Columbus Dispatch about the whole Hispanic thing with a huge picture of the two of us on the front page of the Friday Sports section. It was just cause for more attention, which makes for a little more stress. I still want to emphasize how fun everything is—it’s just that it’s getting very stressful, too.
We left Saturday morning around 7:30 a.m. for our trip to East Lansing. It was my husband, Ed; his brother, Lou; Marylou (Lou’s girlfriend); and my niece, Angela. We arrived about 11:00 a.m. It was very cold, but we were kept warm by the incredible hospitality of our Football Parents Association members (especially the Danishes, Decliners, and Johnsons), who had food, tents, drinks, TV, etc. set up for all of us to enjoy. We had a great time and proceeded to the game around 2:15. It ended up being a wonderful game for Tony, and he got MVP of the game. We got home that night around 11:30 p.m.
INDIANA
Well, this is probably going to go down as the game with the most people we had coming. I was able to purchase 51 tickets through the ticket office just the Monday before the game, and Tony had gotten 10 player tickets. Needless to say, everyone is helping out with the tailgate. It’s the Thursday before the game. I am my typical nervous self. I’m exhausted making some of the food. I’m sad because our second son is moving out and heading to Chicago for a job transfer. I’m happy for him, but sad for me. I’ll write more after the game.
It was a very enjoyable time. We were victorious. I always have very mixed emotions when we play Indiana, because that’s the school where our other son, Joe, played. Joe loved the school, and we have very fond memories of Indiana. For us to cheer against them is never easy. Added to that is the fact that the son of one of my best friends plays for Indiana now. He had a good game and had a couple of catches. But the victory is always bittersweet. Joe was scheduled to come to the game, but he didn’t show up. I am sure it’s difficult to watch his old team (there are still players there from when he played) get massacred.
We did have a very enjoyable time with all of our friends and family, it was a beautiful day, and as I said, we were victorious. Once again, we headed to Smith & Wollensky’s after the game and were treated wonderfully.
MINNESOTA
This was another game where we had many family members coming, some for the first time. My niece and her husband were here from Virginia, and my nephew and his family were here from Cincinnati.
This was probably the worst game for me from a spectator standpoint. First of all, it was very cold. I was in the handicapped seating with my dad, and there were no bodies around us to block out the cold and wind. Worse than that, though, was the fact that Tony got injured. He played the entire first half and seemed to be doing very well. He went in with the team at halftime and never came out. I was so worried about him. Finally, when he walked out he looked up at me and pointed to his head. I knew he probably had a concussion, but I didn’t know the severity. Needless to say, with the cold weather, the fact that Tony was not going back in, and the uneasiness I felt with the injury, my dad and I left the game. I actually found out about his injury from my niece, who was listening to the game on the radio. The announcers had mentioned that Tony had a slight concussion and was taken out of the game. The 12 or so of us at the game had no idea, but everyone else not at the game knew. It was kind of strange.
We ended up at Smith & Wollensky’s again, but it was kind of a bummer because of the concussion.
ILLINOIS
This was a very fun weekend for us. We ended up flying into Chicago and then renting a car to drive to Champaign. We got to the city around 9:00. Tony had called to see if we could stop at a Wendy’s to buy 12 plain double cheeseburgers for the offensive line. (This was a tradition that happened on road trips.) I said, “Sure,” thinking this would be a very easy thing to do. To my dismay, all the Wendy’s in the area were recently closed down, and the nearest one was 40 miles away. I told Tony they would have to settle for Steak ’n Shake, and he said that was fine. So we proceeded to the hotel with the plain cheeseburgers. Let me just mention here that we have NEVER seen Tony the night before a game. We saw Tony, spent a few minutes with him, and left. That night we ventured into Champaign and had a very nice time in several of the bars (of course, we made a big mistake thinking we needed to drink champagne while we were in Champaign).
We had a very fun football parent tailgate across the street from the stadium and went to the game. Well, if you will recall, that was the game that was a real nail-biter.
Suffice it to say, the offensive line NEVER wants to eat Steak ’n Shake burgers before the game, and we will NEVER see Tony the night before a game, either!
We went back to Chicago on Sunday morning after attending Mass in Champaign in a very quaint church where there was a baptism of an entire family. That Sunday was our daughter’s birthday (she goes to school in Chicago), and we spent the day with her. We flew home on Monday.
NORTHWESTERN
It took us forever to get to Chicago for this flight. There were horrible storms in Chicago, and they were coming our way. Even the team ended up flying into Milwaukee and taking a bus to Northwestern. We were supposed to get there around 8:45 p.m., and ended up getting to our hotel in Chicago around 2:00 a.m.
Once again, there was a wonderful football parent tailgate, but we got there a little late. We were waiting for family members at our hotel and that held us up. In any event, the game was very cold, but well played.
Afterward, we went to a restaurant owned by a cousin’s friend. They had put our name on the marquee, and that was very nice. We had about 20 of us there, and we had lots of fun. We headed back to Cleveland on Sunday afternoon.
MICHIGAN
The funny thing about the week that preceded this game is that I was unusually calm. I’m not sure exactly why, but I really wasn’t very nervous about anything involved with the week. We (my husband, my brother-in-law, his friend, my brother) decided to take Friday off work. That was a great decision, because we would have been useless anyway if we had been there.
Thursday night we went to Tony’s apartment, and I cooked a Cuban meal for him and his roommates. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves, especially Tony. He had mentioned he was nervous about the game and had never been nervous about a game before. I think our presence there helped to calm him.
Friday morning we went to “kegs and eggs” and stayed until about noon. I used the entire afternoon to grocery shop, prepare food for Saturday’s tailgate, and get excited for the game. Friends and family were coming in from all over. Our oldest son’s friend, Dave, had come from China just for the game. We had relatives from Arizona, California, Illinois, Florida, West Virginia, and Ohio. We had eight rooms at the Holiday Inn. It was just so much fun!!!! Friday night we ended up at the Varsity Club and had a wonderful time with everyone.
Saturday morning, we (Ed and I) went to Mass. That was very calming and a good thing to do considering we couldn’t sleep anyway. The day seemed to pass very quickly, and everyone had a great time tailgating. There were only 12 of us that had tickets for the game, and the rest of the group stayed in our rooms to watch the great game. Needless to say, we were ecstatic about the outcome.
We came back to the Holiday Inn and found that most people, though hungry, were emotionally exhausted and just wanting to relax. Our regular season had ended, and we couldn’t have been happier and more thankful than we were at that point.
CHAMPIONSHIP BOWL GAME
Today is March 14, 2007, and obviously I haven’t written in this journal in about four months. Much has happened between the end of the Michigan game and now. I will write a little bit about our week in Tempe and bring you up-to-date on things.
There are no words to describe the wonderful time we had when we went to the Phoenix area. There was a total of 42 people in our group, mostly family and some friends. Our entire group was staying at the Tempe Mission Palms. If you’ve been to that area, you know that this hotel is in the perfect location for having a great time and being where all the action is. Some of the highlights of our trip were dinner at Drinkwater’s City Hall, a side trip to Sedona, dinners at the Big Fat Greek Restaurant, hiking trips up the mountain by Sun Devil Stadium, and countless trips to the many bars on Mill Avenue. Those five days were most memorable for me and my siblings because our dad was with us. He was having such a good time, and it warmed our hearts to see him having so much fun. I will never forget that.
I will speak very little about the game. I can only say that the entire time we were there, I just felt like it wasn’t our team I was watching. That was not our Buckeyes that showed up for that game. I simply don’t have any other words.
I didn’t really have a lot of time to feel bad about the game because two days after Tony got back to Columbus, he declared his eligibility for the NFL draft. I can honestly say those few days after we returned were more stressful than any game we had played that season. Tony was agonizing over his decision. It was the most difficult decision he has ever made in his life. So we had returned on Tuesday from Phoenix, and we were back in Columbus on Thursday for his press conference. Hearing him speak and being with him was extremely emotional for us. Though we supported his decision to leave early 100 percent, it wasn’t something we were quite ready to face. We felt we were getting “double dosed” with sadness. First we lose the championship game in a very humiliating way, and then our four wonderful years with Ohio State football were now coming to an end.
Now, writing this in March, I can say that it has been an exciting few months for all of us, especially Tony. We lined up his agent, he continued to be busy with school and workouts, he has had autograph signings, has been to the NFL combine, Pro Day at OSU, and much more. Though we certainly miss our OSU football family, we plan to go to as many games as our schedule will allow; and we very anxiously look forward to the spring game on April 28. Our transition into the next level has been exciting, and we are ready to move forward with Tony.
I will close this journal by saying that March 10 (Pro Day) was a very important day for Tony, but the best part of the day had nothing to do with his performance. We got to personally thank Coach Tressel for the countless ways he helped our son. He is a tremendous coach and a wonderful example of class. We will forever be grateful to him. Now we have closure on our Ohio State football experience, and we are ready for the NFL. Sunday football, here we come!
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