Marching bands, thousands of people... totally par for the course if you're at a big university game. I know people in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's marching band and it's pretty much as intense as being part of a varsity sport there. The weird thing about college football is that, in Wisconsin at least, most of the general public are fans of UW's football team despite the fact that most people never went to school there. I'll admit, I'm rather partial to the Badgers, despite the fact that Madison was my last choice of the colleges I applied to.

It's a very strange culture, I know.