Fight On, Fight On, Fight On
There was a little football game last night. The University of Southern California Trojans played the University of Texas Longhorns for the National Championship of NCAA Football. I'm an 'SC grad and I live in Austin, Texas. Austin is the home of UT.
My family recently took out a life insurance policy on me and now, Kathleen encourages me to take risks. Her latest encouragement was for me to go watch the game with some of my friends (who are UT grads). We went to a place called the Posse East. If you bring up the map (by following the link), the stuff in grey is UT. Where our outside table was, I could look over my shoulder and see Darrell Royal-Memorial Stadium, where UT plays its home games (put the map into 'satellite' mode to see how close to the statium I was). When I wasn't looking over my shoulder, I was looking at 200 UT fans and the big screen TV.
Rumor has it that there was one other USC fan in the place, but she (a) wasn't wearing USC garb like I was and (b) she left around halftime. I kept my school pride subdued - the shirt has a smallish logo on the front and nothing on the back; I'm not crazy. When 'SC did well, I clapped and did a couple of SoCal cheers, but not too loudly. I gave money to my buds to make the beer runs - no way I was going to belly up to the bar. Everything was going well, until I had to go to the bathroom...
On the way there, nothing untoward had happened. Coming back was actually pretty amusing. I was walking by this one UT fan and the way his face changed was priceless. At first, he had a look of congnitive dissonance - did I really have on an 'SC shirt? Then it changed to astonishment - I really did have on an 'SC shirt! Then, it turned for the worse as astonishment went to "Hey, there's a Trojan in UT country". That's what he yelled anyway, as he pointed me out. The moment of truth had arrived - I'd been outed.
A roar went up through the crowd, and it wasn't related to the game. Jeers were shouted, Hook'em signs were displayed, and one pitcher of beer (thankfully empty and thankfully plastic) was thrown my way (that, and an empty tray of nachos were the only times I felt threatened, and really were the only displays of poor sportsmanship). I dodged the pitcher and had to walk the gauntlet back to my table. Flags where flown in my face, people did not get out of my way, but I made it back. My buddies told me that they heard the commotion and couldn't figured out what riled up the crowd - it happened during a commercial. Then they saw me coming out. This was in the first quarter.
The remaining trips to the loo went about as well as the first one. I talked to guy who initially outed me, just to make sure that everything was 'cool' and he said that I was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. And then he gave me a beer. So I figured he was ok with me either way. There were a couple of UT fans that were less-than-appreciative of my presence, but I figure that's just part of the statistical makeup of any crowd. And besides, Lance, Bob and Bret had my back...
Of course, USC did not win the game. And what a game it was. After the well-deserved victory, lots of people came up to me to tell me that they were pretty impressed that I showed up in garb. Turns out my buds were sort of running interference for me by telling people that I was a 'SC grad and an OK guy. That was nice. Had the game gone the other way, their help may not have mattered much.
We walked over to the UT Drag where the party was. Everyone was in a terrific mood and it was pretty infectious. We stopped to get a pitcher of beer (I bought) and then headed outside. It was pretty impressive being in the middle of that celebration. The Tower was lit orange and the Eyes of Texas were upon the crowd. The Eyes of the Cops were upon me and my shirt. One of them (Officer Baker) told me that they couldn't really protect me so I should not do anything more stupid than wearing the shirt I was wearing (all in jest). I stuck around for a bit, basking in the reflected celebration, and eventually went home.
It was fun, it wasn't too dangerous, and it was a terrific game, even if it didn't work out quite the way I wanted it to. As I was talking to my friends about the victory, they brought up that the last time UT won the Nat'l Championship was in 1970 meaning that the next time UT will win, we'd all be in our 70's. I calmly looked at them and said:
"Next time SC wins, I'll be 40." (I'm 39 now)
Fight On, Fight On, Fight On
Posted at 10:03AM Jan 05, 2006 by schnee in Life | Comments[0]