10th – 12th Nov
College football is a phenomenon here. It is televised and can get some pretty decent viewing figures, but the thirst and passion for the teams are more reflected in the colossal size of some of the home stadia. Supporters are current students, alumni of the college, family and friends of current and past students, locals of the home towns of the colleges and complete randoms. Like Us.
Going to a college football game was on our original list of things we would like to do on our USA travels. We wanted to go to a big one, to see a team with a massive stadium filled with crazy fans; and we wanted to experience true tailgating.
There were a few things to co-ordinate: knowing where we we going to be on our travels, a big game with available tickets, and finding a close-by campsite. We had spent an afternoon of intense multi-device research in early September in Connecticut and locked in our plan. We secured tickets to see Texas A&M (Agricultural & Mechanical) play Ole Miss at Kyle Field in College Station on Nov 10th. This stadium holds over 102,000 people. That is nearly double the capacity of Eden Park, NZ’s national stadium. It’s crazy. By capacity it is the 5 largest stadium in the world, after Rungrado (North Korea, 150,000) and 3 other college football stadia. We also managed to book an RV spot on the campus, only a mile from the stadium, for 2 nights. This was essentially a gravel carpark with spray painted lines to demarcate the sites, so no facilities at all. The price did not reflect this obviously. But this was to also be our tailgating experience as it was to be the weekend home of about 100 other rigs, all armed with awnings, gazebos, chairs, BBQs, smokers, outside TVs, coolers of beer and tables groaning with meat, chips, dips and sides. Many of these people come only to tailgate and don’t actually go to the game.
We really had no idea what to expect when we pitched up at about midday on the day before the game. We were fairly early and one of the first to set up. (The place looked quite different about 5 hours after the photo was taken, by which time the place was heaving!).
We had some lunch then rugged up warm to walk into the central campus to buy some supporters gear. The balmy Indian summer had given way to an icy arctic blast. It was cold, cold, cold now. On our way out we got chatting to a nearby neighbour called Bruce. He had done a solo set-up of an epic tailgating outfit based around a large RV/horse trailer and was now happily sat watching football on the large flatscreen TV. His wife and their friend (both alumni) were joining him later, and they had 2 kids between them who were current students and would come by too. He was kind enough to extend an open invitation for us to join their festivities over the weekend, and we accepted straight away. How could we refuse?! This looked like a professional outfit. We walked up to the merchandise store and both bought a body warmer in team colours, and I bought a woolly hat too. If the game had been last week we’d have been buying T-shirts. Madness! Then we walked across campus to a recommended bar called Dixie Chicken, which is a college institution and the sort of place that looks like nothing from the outside but was enormous and packed full on the inside. We did the sensible late-afternoon thing and shared 2 jugs of beer without eating and then rolled ‘home’. It was fully dark by the time we got back to Tin Can and it took us a while to find him amongst the new arrivals. The place was buzzing and noisy. Nearly every rig had a generator running to power the business of having fun. This was to be the soundtrack of the weekend. After some stomach-lining food we headed back out to join Bruce, wife Kenny Kaye and friend Kevin for drinks. They were amazingly welcoming and we had some top-tips for being true supporters for the game the next day. This included the gift of two ‘spirit towels’ from Kenny Kaye. She said we would find out what to do with them….!
The game was scheduled for 11am. The time dictated entirely by the TV networks, and the least favoured slot. Too early for pre-game tailgating. We basically got up, had breakfast, dressed in lots of warm layers and set off walking to the stadium by 9.30am. We managed to find a cup of coffee on the concourse and then took our seats. For this we had to gain some altitude having deliberately booked seats as high up as we could. This would have given us some cover in case of rain, but mainly gave us a fantastic view of the whole spectacle.
The team is known as The Aggies (from ‘Agricultural’) and the entire A&M student body are known as The 12th Man. This originates from an episode in 1922 when the Aggies were playing an away game in Dallas against a much stronger team. The team suffered multiple injuries and potentially might have run out of players to field. An A&M student E. King Gill, who had been a Aggies player earlier in the season, and was a Dallas local, was in the stands that day. He was pulled from the crowd and asked to be on stand-by to play if needed, a 12th man. He willingly did so, joined the bench but in the end was not needed. The Aggies won the game despite being the underdogs and the day was cemented in A&M history. Now the student fans all stand for the entire length of every game, demonstrating their support and readiness to be called upon if needed. They constantly sing, or ‘yell’, lead by ‘yell leaders’, they link arms and sway to certain songs and they twirl their small white spirit towels above their heads. (Mainly to put off the opposition). Now we knew what they were for! We had a ball. A 3.5 hour chilly ball. And we won! A much needed victory after a few losses.
After the game we headed back to camp and joined our adopted tailgate again. There was a mouthwatering offering of freshly smoked meat on the BBQ, and a fantastical amount of accompaniments. Our offerings were worse than paltry in comparison, and didn’t even make it out of the bag, I don’t think. There were a few more people to meet, including Cameron and Lane, the ‘kids’, who gave us the current student insights! The party was reasonably civilised and a bit curtailed by the cold and the long day, but we had a great time and very grateful to our new Texan friends for including us. It had been an amazing weekend.
The next morning we surfaced to an already half empty parking lot. Even Bruce had managed to pack up and leave before we got up. We did our easiest pack up so far, and set of west to Austin.