If you haven’t experienced it, let me explain. It is SERIOUS BUSINESS!
There are four seasons in Texas: Summer, Football, Christmas and Spring Football. And I’m serious.
High school football in Texas is like college football in the rest of the country. And when the Texas A&M Aggies or the University of Texas Longhorns play, large parts of this state don’t move.
I have a friend who lives half the year in Italy, tending her olive trees, and the rest of the year here, in Bryan/College Station Texas. I saw her about two weeks before the first Aggie game, and we discussed the hot weather here, and she told me how nice and cool it had been in Italy. I asked why she came back, and her answer was “Football season”. She actually left Italy for Texas—when the heat was in the 100’s—with humidity—for football!
I like football, but I’m not infected with the Texas Football Disease.
We used to live in Oklahoma. If football disease here is a 10, it’s an 8.5 there. It’s still big business, but not quite as bad.
Then there was growing up in North Carolina and experiencing basketball fever. As bad as it was, it wasn’t Texas in football season.
When the Aggies play a home game, we try to do all our driving around on Friday, before 4 and not again until Sunday morning. You wouldn’t believe the traffic! Former students and Aggie parents flood the area, filling up every hotel for miles around, and every restaurant. Oh, and during the game, there’s hardly a car on the road! Anyone not at the game is home listening to the radio.
Even church is considerably fuller on a game weekend.
And on game day, almost everybody is dressed in their maroon and white Aggie clothes, as are their children—and dogs! All you see is maroon and white—except for the very few like us that chose to dress in normal clothes.
Its ridiculous when you see a grown woman dressed in what looks like an Aggie cheerleader outfit, and her three or so year old child wearing 12th Man shirt and shorts. What’s really funny is the Aggies don’t have cheerleaders; they have yell leaders, all guys who wear white.
For a 6:00 pm game, tailgaters start setting up around 8:00 am. And tailgating is a true art form.
If the Aggies win, everyone in town is happy. If they lose, the whole town is morose—ESPECIALLY if it’s the Longhorns that beat them.
Speaking of the game with University of Texas, they still have the infamous bonfire. It’s just now done off campus, not school sponsored. You see, that’s tradition. And at Texas A&M, tradition is everything.
There’ve been three games and three wins as of this writing. It’s a happy town, at least right now.
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