Fiesta in a Bowl

In Christmas cards that my brother and I received a few weeks ago, we found slips of paper detailing the highlights of our plans to attend the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona on January 5, 2009 to watch the Texas Longhorns and the Ohio State Buckeyes duke it out.

Of course, if you'll recall, I chose to attend Texas A&M University while my parents are proud Texas Exes and my brother is a student at UT. I knew what I was doing- I love A&M, would not have traded my college experience for anything, and have taken responsibility for the full implications of that as a member of my family over the past five years. I would liken it to marrying someone that your family respects but is clueless as to why you love them so much. This also means that I am duped into attending UT games and events under the guise of spending time with my family.

"We are all going to Austin for your brother's fraternity Parents Weekend and the UT/Oklahoma State game, you're coming right?"

"Saturday is the Texas/OU game and we're going to dinner afterward, you'll be around right?"

"You can go to an A&M game- they play UT on Thanksgiving!"

"We're going to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl- it's a family trip."

After the crazy wedding weekend, I was ready to relax and participate in the antithesis of weddings, which is coincidentally enough watching college football. BH, KH and my aunt and uncle also had tickets to the game, so the eight of us boarded the plane Sunday morning and headed West. We stopped first in Tucson to see our grandparents, and they picked us up and took us to their house for a few hours.

We got back on the plane and were in Phoenix 25 minutes later, then settled into our hotel rooms (KH and I didn't have to share with the boys for Round Two of the trip) and all met downstairs at BLT Steak for dinner. A party of eight on a Sunday night, we had the restaurant to ourselves. As the Dads scanned the wine list, the wait staff brought over bread, and a dip that was introduced as chicken liver pate. I didn't know how I felt about trying pate at a restaurant that had a picture of a cow's anatomy drawn on a chalkboard for all to see. I've tried some odd things in my day, but the kids end of the table and namely KH, who is a vegetarian, were looking for pats of butter. We When-in-Rome'd it and it was actually not bad. I wouldn't eat it with the same fervor as say, French onion dip with Ruffles, but I tried it nonetheless.

They ordered bottles of wine, a few appetizers and salads and it was one of those meals that goes on for hours without a lull in conversation or anyone worrying about the time or where to next. Possibly carnivore in a past life, I enjoyed my perfectly medium filet. We even went hiking on Monday morning, which seemed like a very Beaver Cleaver aspiration made by eight people who had been drinking non-Cleaver-approved bottles of wine the night before. But we actually went.

Feeling the need to draw the line somewhere, I flat out refused to wear burnt orange to the game. I am a lady of principles. We even got to see my Dad's youngest brother and his family, and I was baffled at how much his sons, my cousins who are 12 and 17, look like my brother. If you watched the game, you know that the first half was an uneventful series of field goals, but the second half came down to the wire. UT was behind with less than two minutes left in the fourth quarter, and in my evil mind I weighed the pros and cons of them losing. Pros- they're a little self-righteous and . Cons- the damper it would put on our fun trip and the testing of my sanity in a plane with all of them on the way home. 

They won in the end, 24-21, but they didn't cover the eight point spread as predicted. It was a small victory that made me a little bit happy. Almost as happy as I was when my friend AR, who lives in Scottsdale, came to pick me up at midnight and take me to In-N-Out for burgers.

Good week.

"College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture."
-Elbert Hubbard

Style Points? What are Style Points?

I went over to hang out with my friend HR the other night in Dallas, who came home for the week from Houston. I had a message from her when I left the gym on Saturday morning; she called because she knew I would be interested in watching the Texas Tech and OU match-up that night, and so we made a date.

Our beloved Texas A&M football team has basically been stuffed into a locker and forgotten this season by all the other Big 12 South teams. It happens. In the throws of a "rebuilding year" we've been watching ESPN GameDay after Fox Sports Southwest show covering OU, Texas, and Texas Tech all beat each other up on and off the field all season. Oklahoma State even got a few punches in at one point, and now they are hoping for a huge (read: highly unlikely) upset over OU this Thanksgiving weekend.

Being girls and all, we had spinach alfredo pizza and wine and settled in to watch OU take a commanding 28-0 lead. By the end of the second quarter the announcers had already started beating the dead BCS horse and began talking about how "style points" would come into play when deciding which teams will go to the National Championship and which will get screwed.

I had an email from my friend ND, a Texas grad, who evidently posted something she found making the case for the Longhorns in the BCS. She had rapid comments on it from guys representing OU and Texas, agreeing, disagreeing and using greater than or less than signs to try and get their points across. She had unknowingly created a monster.

"Style points," an ambiguous little term invented by the BCS, roughly translates to an end-of-season popularity contest that will ultimately elevate OU, Texas or Texas Tech above one another at the expense of the other two to play in the National Championship game. In case you haven't been paying attention; Texas beat OU, then Tech beat Texas, and most recently OU beat Tech. Each team has one loss, and the unbeaten SEC team Alabama is undefeated, meaning the most likely scenario is that one of these Big 12 South teams will end up playing them in the National Championship game.

Now you're caught up.

Since the BCS explains itself as thus: "It is not a playoff system. It is nothing more than attempt to match the No. 1 and No. 2 teams within the bowl system and to create exciting matchups in four other bowl games," you can understand why people have been up in arms for years over the fact that they have still done nothing to create a playoff system.

Since the game we were watching was not even close in the second half, HR and I started assigning "style points" of our own to each of the three teams. It got to be an ongoing joke throughout the rest of the weekend, so I thought I would include a few of my favorites:

Plus one to Bob Stoops, for being the poster child of white visors. Plus another one because you know he gives those out as SWAG during recruiting visits.



Plus one to Mack Brown for still having all of his hair. That's a rare accomplishment for men his age (57) these days. And look at that golf clap!




Plus two to Mike Leach for bearing an uncanny resemblance to Vince Gill. Long-lost twins?




Plus one for Sam Bradford. Someone decided to introduce him to Proactive after last season, which should really help his candidacy for Heisman.



Plus two to Colt McCoy for his name alone. Small town Texas kid? Named Colt? He was bred for this job.




Plus two for Brandon Carter, the Texas Tech player who aspires to be a professional wrestler and paints his face like this for every game. Dream big, kiddo. Minus one for the tongue ring though.



For sake of neutrality, I chose for each team to end up with three points. No pointing fingers- I'm just the kid in the locker, remember? Obviously the computers and the humans running the BCS have their hands full this year, since these are not the only one-loss teams in the rankings. Maybe the governance of the BCS will start listening to the American people and Obama and fix this mess one of these days.

Maybe.

"Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing."
-Vince Lombardi

Much hullabaloo about nothing

One favorite pastime of my family's is to remind me of my decision to attend their rival university. The house is divided- though three against one has left me on my own side of the table during Thanksgiving weekend the past few years.

I've spent many days, weeks and months on the business-end of Aggie jokes, which is to be expected. It even came out in the course of conversation during one ATM vs. UT weekend that my father once decked a Corps member who had shoved one of his buddies after a game in College Station. Incredulous, since that's probably the most non-my-dad thing I've ever heard him mention, and casually at that, I asked why he would do such a thing, and he said it was because he was the only one not wearing cowboy boots that day. As if it were so simple.

Funny, "eye for an eye" wasn't one of the lessons I was taught as a child. After choosing to go to ATM, I quickly learned that all bets would be off on game day. It's not just my parents and my brother either. I have aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles and cousins aplenty who swear allegiance to the dark side.

Since my parents went to UT and my brother is a senior there now, of course that meant I was spending the majority of my Labor Day weekend holding down the fort at home. Those few days leading up to the beginning of football season are always so promising- probably because nothing has gone wrong yet.

Anyway, at one point this weekend everything clicked, and I realized that my family has been slowly trying to brainwash me.

I walked out the door to go on a run, looked down and first noticed my key, which is burnt orange and black and has a longhorn on it. "The only extra key we have" as my mom described it when I moved home. Then I saw that I had on a Parent's Weekend shirt from my brother's fraternity, which also has a UT logo on it, as well as the pre-game show for their football game blaring in the background. RED FLAGS EVERYWHERE.

When I got back, I changed shirts and planted myself in front of my mom's computer downstairs, conveniently close to the kitchen and unlimited sweet tea refills, only to watch as the ESPN GameCast updates showed ATM drop their first season opener in 20 years.

Regardless of football scores, it doesn't matter, I think my family is clear on where my loyalties will remain.

"If I had to tell you about Aggie values in one sentence I would simply ask the question: How can I be of service?"
-Current Texas ATM Student