The Last Thanksgiving
This year was the first time I’ve been home for Thanksgiving since college. It sounds weird to say that. It’s even weirder to know that this was only my 5th trip back to Texas in over 2 years. Anyways, home for Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t have picked a better year.
As those of you who follow college football know, Texas A&M has said sayonara to the Big 12 and has decided to try it’s luck in richer pastures (SEC). While the good Aggies extended an invitation to the University of Texas to continue their traditional Thanksgiving game, the Longhorns decided to be complete jerks and tell them “sorry, but no.” So ended the 3rd longest college football rivalry (can you believe #1 and #2 are Minnesota v Wisconsin and Missouri v Kansas?). Knowing that tickets would be hard to come by, I relied solely on my sister, who came through in amazing fashion. And that’s how I ended up at Kyle Field, College Station, Texas for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving day was postponed for our family. We spent a few hours at the grandparent’s house and watching the parade, but at 1 we jumped in the car to trek to the stadium. We wandered around the Texas A&M campus for a while, joining tailgates of friends and doing the traditional pre-game activities. While wandering around tailgates I ran in to a few old friends from high school. Now since I haven’t stayed friends with many people it was a nice little game of catch-up. Nothing too bad, until you realize that you’ve covered all the “how’ve you been, what’re you doing, where’re you working” questions and the conversation dives into discussions of their latest adventure together. That’s pretty much my cue to leave.
Pre-game activities in College Station involve a lot. There’s the team walk in (led by the band), the corps march in (led by the band), the fly over, and a resounding yell practice just before kick off to get us all in the spirit. Students at TAMU don’t sit down during the game so we were standing the whole time. We were also crowded in to the stands tighter than sardines. You wonder who thought it would be a great idea to shove 88,000 people in to a stadium. And then I was the only one in a 5 person radius wearing orange. There were a few others here and there, but I felt very, very alone.
The game started off pretty bad for the Longhorns but true to form, A&M screwed it up in the 2nd half. After three interceptions which really helped Texas we found ourselves with seconds left on the clock and 1 point down. A 40-yard field goal kicked ended in victory for Texas and a lot of dejected A&M fans. Sorry guys, but you kinda deserved it after halftime.
The half time performances were some of my absolute favorite. UT went first and created a huge Bevo on the field, then they presented the A&M band with their flag (UT marches with flags for all the Big 12 Teams), and spelled out “Thank You aTm” on the field. The Aggies took the field and the first thing they did was saw Varsity’s horns off, quite literally, while playing their fight song. They did end the routine with the 4-way cross, which is quite and amazing site to see, so I can’t hold that against them.
The weirdest part about winning at an opposing stadium, is that there’s really no celebration. I was too far away from the Longhorn band to join in with the fight song or school song, and by the time I made it down to that end of the field they were packing up to leave. At that point all you can do is get out of there without accidentally invoking the wrath of the losing team and one of their hot-headed supporters.
After the game I went back to Houston for a few days to hang out with family. I got to see two of my cousins that I haven’t seen in a year and my grandparents which was really nice. I’ll be back in Texas in 3 weeks, which is crazy to think about. Trip #6!
