Nonbaseball Highlights of the Super Regional
By Will Eidam, June 15, 2010, 5:58pm, The Score
I am not a Texas Longhorns fan. Technically, I’m now part of the media, so out of principle I should not be a Longhorns fan. But technicalities aside, I was born and raised in Nebraska so I have no desire to put on burnt orange polos nor hook 'em horns – largely because the Big Ten won’t allow it.
Big Ten/Big 12 drama aside,* I’ve been in Longhorn country for years now, and I feel like I’m understanding Longhorns fans, even if I’m not one myself.
* By “aside” I mean I will address it later and often. This is going to be an exciting year for sports.
In my two years, I’ve found that if there’s one thing Longhorns fans hate, it’s defeat. And if there are two things Longhorns fans hate, it’s defeat and talking about defeat. Husker fans like to spend weeks dissecting a bowl-game loss, but it seems Longhorn fans would rather move onto the next sport rather than wallow in misery. It must be nice to be good in sports other than just football, huh?
Having said that, I’m going to do Longhorn fans a favor and ignore talking about how the Texas baseball team lost in the NCAA Super Regional tournament to the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs. I’ll ignore talking about how Texas, as the No. 2 team in the country, failed to win the championship (in baseball and football). I’ll also ignore how Augie Garrido doesn’t get to attend the final College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium as a coach, but rather as a spectator.
I attended all three games of the Super Regional this past weekend, and baseball results omitted, here were a few nonbaseball highlights:
The Bad: The Heat: Really, NCAA? I understand that all eight Super Regionals were played in warm climate regions, but Texas had all three of its games in the afternoon – in 90 degree weather. You couldn’t just have one of those three games in the evening? Granted, most people would be thankful to lose 10 pounds of weight just by sweating during a baseball game, but at 155 pounds (now 145), I am not as thankful.
The Good: The Tailgating: UFCU Disch-Falk Field is a wonderful stadium. It gets packed with fans, and has a beautiful field. But the under-rated quality of Disch-Falk is the ability to watch from outside the stadium while tailgating at the same time. For a series like the Super Regionals, it’s hard to get a ticket to any of the games, so it’s a treat to be able to watch from the fences so that Texas’ 6,500 capacity stadium sounds like there are 7,500 fans cheering. Oh, and let’s not forget that you can drink.
The Bad: Bitter Texas Fans: I won’t talk too much about this because I know a small group of people doesn’t always represent an entire population, but … when TCU was forming a dog-pile after advancing to their first CWS appearance ever, I was standing around a crowd of UT fans who weren’t taking the loss nicely. “It’s not like you’ve ever won anything before,” shouted one fan. “You still suck!” shouted another. Very classy.
The Good: Meeting the Coolest 13-Year-Old Ever: With every bad crop of fans, there’s always one that’s going to make you forget the rest. This weekend, it was 13-year-old Chelsea, who turned out to be a second cousin of UT pitcher Taylor Jungmann (which is fitting seeing as how he was Texas' best player last weekend, but I digress). Sure, during our conversation we had to discuss the Twilight series and the merits of Team Jacob vs. Team Edward, but she knows her Longhorns sports and she was classy during the entire third game of the series. There’s your shout-out, Chelsea, way to be awesome!
The Bad: "Texas Fight": In my two years of attending UT events, I’ve heard the call-and-response chant “Texas Fight" every time I go to a game. And every time I hear it, I have to take a second to figure out what everyone is saying. Is it Texas “Pride” or Texas “Fight”? I struggle with this every time. Either figure out a new chant, one that’s easy to understand like Nebraska’s “Husker Power,” or enunciate your Ts better and we won’t have this problem in the future. T-hanks.
The Good: Post Game Hook 'Em: This ranks in the Top 5 of my favorite college traditions. Texas players walking toward their home crowd after a game, regardless of the result. I believe it was Mack Brown who started this tradition with UT football, but I’m pleased to see that Texas’ other sports teams are following along. After a soul-crushing defeat at the hands of TCU, the players walked over to their supporting fans and hooked the horns. Belligerent fans quieted down, players stopped mourning, and everyone in the stadium was reminded about the all important lesson: It’s not all about winning or losing … that is, at least, not when you lose.
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