"This practice is top secret," the earnest young man said. "You can't be here."
The most important team in today's Rose Bowl was spread across the Pasadena City College football field. There was running, some bumping, and somebody barking through a bullhorn.
The earnest young man waved his arm away from the field, and you followed, finally stopping just beyond an end zone.
Then you noticed, he had escorted you to a spot from where you could observe this top secret practice in detail.
You also noticed, he was wearing swim trunks and Mickey Mouse socks.
Meet the Stanford Band, one of the few facets of big-time college athletics that is not always as it seems, or as we expect it to be, and thank goodness for that.
Welcome to the one attraction you can visit on football Saturday afternoons that will challenge your senses, test your wits, make you angry, make you laugh.
Make you realize that for all its elaborate padding, makeup and props, college sports are still about kids who are young, impulsive, rebellious, occasionally inappropriate and, well, still in college.
In a couple of cases this day, they were still in their pajamas.
Some shirtless, others shoeless, the 250-member band prepared for today's nationally televised halftime show as you would expect kids on holiday to prepare for anything.
They milled around, laughing and joking. The guy yelled something through the bullhorn, they sprinted to a different part of the field.
Once there, they milled around some more until the guy barked again. Then they sprinted to a different part of the field. And so on.
"We only look like a motley crew," said Evan Meagher, the band's renowned tree mascot. "We are actually a finely tuned group all striving toward a single goal."
And that is?
"The national anthem," he said.
Do you put on a show, or do you march?
"No," said bandsman Chris Henderson.
On this fine sunny afternoon, there was a tuba player riding a unicycle. There were other "musicians" circling the track in a game of leapfrog.
There was nothing that even remotely resembled marching. There was barely anything that even remotely resembled music.
Somebody was "playing" a fork and knife. Somebody was "playing" a beer keg.
Somebody else was playing what band officials solemnly refer to as a "drum thing" fashioned out of an erector set.
