thecages

Saturday was game-day for the UT (nobody says University of Texas) Longhorns.
The Horns (nobody says Longhorns) are the 2005 National College Football champions and have been embraced as messiahs of Austin's sports-drenched folks.
Austin doesn't have any major league NFL, Major Leauge Baseball or NBA) sports teams and so having the US champs college ball (nobody says football) team is a big deal.

The football season started this w/end (Labour Day w/end) and while the Horns were playing a minor neighbour school it was still a big event.
The 85 000-seater stadium was totally sold out.

Pre-match cheer (cheer is big in US football[2]) started at around 9am[1] and involves the gathering of fans in a tradition known as tailgating. This basically involves sitting on the back (the tailgate) of trucks (massive Ford, GMC and Dodge 4x4s) foor beer and barbequeue.
I'm sure that back in pre-metropole days of Austin this was cool (and South African rugby has very similar traditions) but the dense urban surroundings of the university and its stadium means that this has evolved(mutated?) into people sitting on the backs of trucks in multi-storey parking lots drinking beer and grilling. weird.

There are also several fans' clubs to which you can purchase entrance. This amounts to beer gardens with entertainment provided and more, uhm, cheer.


The stadium itself is gargantuan with two main stands (East and West) with sweeping decks.
The North stand is taken up with, what we were told is, the largest single screen in the world[4].



All tickets are priced the same (officially $50) and so there is an element of luck(skill?) in finding good seats and negotiating a price with the scalpers outside the stadium(apparently the entire season's tickets is sold-out before the season starts).
We somehow ended up with $75 tickets seven rows up on the 40-yard line (just about dead center) - prime seats. The extravaganza(and more importantly the violence[5]) would take place right in front of our noses.


Right now is supposedly the hottest time of year in Texas and since Fox Sports decided to schedule the match for 11am this would probably qualify as the hottest game of the year as well.
The mega-screen cheerfully informed us that the expected temperature at half time would be 92ºF and by the end of the fourth quarter we could look forward to a searing 97.

And in this sweltering heat we would be presented with a show to rival anything Nazi Germany could provide (sorry, bad joke).

The UT Show Band (nobody says marching band) consists of (I guess) 120 members, all done up in their duds and ankle-length white socks.
And boy can they blow up a storm. Their un-amplified tunages blasts all over the stadium and really rocks. It's a very, very impressive thing - but I wouldn't buy the CD.

There are more traditions than what are worth mentioning, from the world's biggest bass drum to the official Longhorn mascot named Bevo to a cannon (named Smokey[6]) which is fired each time the home team scores.




The band arrived, played up a storm, did their fancy choreographed moves, razzed the opposition and before you knew it, it was time for the Star Spangled Banner.


Followed by the slick unfurling and showing of one mother of a massive Lone Star flag

and an appearence by home-town boy made good Chuck Norris[7]! yeah!

And then finally - game time!


UT were playing North Texas who are generally known to be very much inferior to UT and this turned out to be a no-brainer[10].

The game itself moves quite slowly with 60 minutes of game time divided into 4 quarters and spread out over a total of 4 hours.
There's a lot of standing around involved.
But the players are very impressive - enormous hulks of pumped up beef that can probably only operate for a few minutes at a time (players are continually coming onto and leaving the field) but would likely be able to kill several men in that time with their bare hands.
It's a very American game - regimented and contra-endurance, but awesomely powerful when it's going.

The only feature bigger than the titanic players on the field is the UT's big big big screen on the Northern end of the stadium. While the action on the field may be stop/start the action on the screen is totally non-stop and pumped up with advertising, instant replays, announcements, transcripts of commentary, statistics and even the score.
It's like having 85000 people share a high definition TV with no need for a remote.


In the end I drank about 3 litres of soda[12], watched at least two hatless, strappy-top wearing chicks go from white to merlot and crapped my pants (just about) numerous times as Smokey roared each time the UT marched to their crushing 56-7 defeat of North Texas.


Qualitatively I had a great time. It was fun and outrageous and beyond OTT. But there's also some stuff about it that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I've spent the last few days trying to put what I've seen here into perspective of what I know about the rest of the world (especially the absurd history of South Africa of which I experienced the horrific choking, phlegm-spitting end).
And what I think is this: football and team pride as an expression of community is clearly very important to a large segment of the population.
And the fans really are friendly, respectful and passionate. I can honestly say that I didn't see one single person behaving like an idiot.
But (and this is the but) - I can also with total conviction say that I've never seen such a level of total conformity from such a large group of people.
Everyone knows the cheers by heart(which is not unusual by any means), everyone wears their team colours (nor is this) and everyone pays equal attention with equal appreciation to every detail.
But underneath this I felt a level of mutual re-inforcement of a conformance mentality and a deep, deep sense of belonging, not by relationships, but by attested loyalty that really freaked me out.
And it's not that anyone who doesn't conform is rejected - you're still welcome.
The problem is that so many people conform so willingly and so exactly and ultimately bring so very, very little of their own personalities and ideas with them.


Would I do it again? I'm not sure - I didn't really find it engaging as a sport, but the spectacle is unmatched. It's the ultimate distillation of what it means to be American in that real white-guy, big truck, alumni pride, US Today reading, Maxwell House drinking way.
It rocks, but it is scary as well.



[1] the relative minor status of this game in national terms meant that the broadcast networks shuffled the broadcast into one of their non-prime slots at 11am.
[2] the following day I saw a girl wearing a Nike-branded t-shirts that read 'Other athletes lift weights; Cheerleaders lift the athletes.' - Cheerleading is considered a form of athletics[3].
[3] as the National Cheerleading Championchips broadcast on ESPN attest to.
[4] though, apparently the Chinese are working on a bigger one. EiD?
[5] not that the game is that violent (too many pads) - but let's be real here about why this is such a popular game.
[6] sheesh! enough with the cute names already - the only thing not given a quolocial name is the opposition - uhm, wait - they're called the prey. "Hook 'em Horns!" *sigh*
[7] as an aside, we saw Chuck Norris in a swanky downtown restaurant[8] the night before. He's really short. really short.
[8] the plush Kenichi, home of the $70 steak[9].
[9] I shit you not, $70 - for a steak. We stuck to sushi at a breezy $30 a head.
[10] perhaps a bad turn of phrase as college football players are not generally known for their superior intellects[11].
[11] last year's start quaterback Vince Young is rumoured to be functionally illiterate - not that it matters when you can throw like that.
[12] here's a final rocking fact - US college football games are totally dry. Yup, no booze allowed on the grounds due to the US drinking limit of 21. Yowza! That's four hours in the sun with nothing but a soft drink and adrenalised pride and patriotism pumping through your veins. No wonder tailgating is so huge.