Texas Gameday Experience

Last night was not the first time I have been to a game in Austin as my sister is UT grad and has season tickets. However, it was my first time in DKR not pretending to be a Texas fan. Props to Tiger nation for showing up and being loud and rowdy in their house.

Yes, it was hot. That was one of the hottest games I've ever been to period and there was no breeze in the stadium.

The Good
Their fans were nothing but classy. Fist pumps and handshakes greeted me on the way out. They had a lot of energy and were clearly pumped for the game. Great gameday experience. While some of them left after we went up 45-31, most of them stayed. Singing "The Eyes of Texas" after the game is a big deal, win or lose, and my sister insisted on staying until that was done. Very impressive that they did not give up on this team.

$10 RT Bus service from the Intermural fields was a great way to avoid the crowds and not have to sit for over an hour trying to get out of a parking garage after the game (props to the sister on that).

DKR is a beautiful stadium. It's clean and well designed aesthetically for a piecemeal stadium that's been around as long as ours has. They have a trophy room in the north end zone that's really impressive (I joked that all the Big XII trophies they have make it feel like I had strolled into a gift shop selling commemorative glass bowls). Bonus: it was air conditioned--very nice break from the heat.

Best LSU fans of the night: the Tiger baws who took up the rest of the row next to my sister's seats. We got there and she looked up, saw a whole row of Tiger fans, and said "WTF?!?" I high-fived them all and looked at her and said, "This is great!"

Best Texas fan of the night: the black dude the stadium cam caught bug eyed after we went up 20-7. Dude was looking straight at the camera with the expression "Oh s***. They good." followed by a slight change to "What the hell, defense?" Me and one other UT fan in my section caught it and busted out laughing and high fived each other.

The Bad
All of the vendors outside of the stadium AND the alumni center ran out of bottled water before the game. My sister and I were reduced to grabbing a couple of cups of ice to munch on to cool us off.

As classy as the Texas fans are, they were beyond clueless about us: our school, our history, our personnel. Almost none of them knew we beat Georgia last year as well and seemed to think that Ehlinger was going to play circles around Burrow. They think that they are DBU and chanted that whenever their receivers made a play instead of searching for their own identity.

Their culture seems to revolve around celebrity whether its Matthew McConaughey or Sam Ehlinger. They went apes*** every time MM was shown on the big screen. On offense, it was like there weren't any other players on that side of the ball besides Ehlinger; I heard lots of "C'mon Sam! Go Sam! Why did you do that, Sam?". If he ever goes down, this fanbase will be beyond demoralized. They even went apes*** over a subdued commercial for the University. Strange.

The Ugly
The piped in music was god awful. First of all let rename it "music." It was blaring bass and so noisy that you couldn't hear the announcer or the referee or their band. I love EDM and club music, but I started groaning in the 3rd Quarter when they played any music other than their band over the speakers.

They way they treat visiting teams strips away a lot of pageantry. First of all, the visiting team locker room is down a flight of stairs. The visiting team has to come up the stairs to run on the field. I've seen this at previous games and you don't even notice the visiting team is taking the field until half of them are already on it. Their visitors' ticket allotment was piss poor and they stuck our pep band in the upper deck--who does that? My sister said that's pretty common and they can't really seem to find a good place to seat their own band as they've been moved around the last few years. They are adding seats in the south end zone which will be good for locking sound in, but bad for air circulation and cutting off that amazing view of downtown Austin. They just don't seem to know how to handle the stadium space well; the constant expansion has led to an atmosphere devoid of any tension between the fanbases as they choose to make the other team's fans invisible.

All in all, it's still a great gameday experience with a passionate, loyal fanbase who turn out even when the team is bad. I feel very blessed that I got to be there in person and grateful my sister let me share her tickets to this one. We both had a blast, even if she said she wasn't happy for me. I gave her a big hug anyway.