Game Day

It's game day!

The stadium sits like a colliseum in the middle of the campus. Towering over the surrounding architecture, Roman in nature. It is a temple of athletics.

When I walk through campus at noon, I see the preparations for the game at 6 pm have already begun. Not just parking attendants and orange vested volunteers in charge of crowd control, but the tailgaters have also arrived.

Tailgating is a perverse version of the American family picnic. Named after the tailgate of pickup trucks where these perverted picnics take place, tailgating now has spread beyond the back end of pick-up trucks. As I walk through campus, I see, in the park space available merely fifty yards away from the stadium, event tents covering televisions connected to satellite receivers, coolers filled with ice and beer, barbecques, and a collection of lawn chairs. The families who have arrived six hours early will watch other football games all afternoon, before watching the Texas Longhorn football game that will be played in the stadium across the street.

America continues to reaffirm my assumptions about its culture: An almost religious obsession with football, family activity centered around the television, and the automobile at the center of life.

I speak to a friend as I walk through campus telling him what I see around me. "Football," he says, "is just a way to distract the masses from realizing how shitty their lives and the world around them really is."

Winning is so pure, I think to myself. It is so final. A clear, unadultered positive in a world where nothing is as good or as bad as it seems. And being a fan, tailgating, cheering your team on, is like a ritual, a prayer.

Later that night, at approximately ten p.m., the Longhorns beat Louisiana 59 to 20.

The Gods are benevolent to their Texas fans today.