Exclusive Texas Monthly September FAN issue

Harry · August 12, 2011

You will see this pic and read this article here first!! We had two board members who were involved in the photo shoot and you will see them in the picture. Thanks to both of them for their Mean Green spirit! Enjoy and please visit http://www.texasmonthly.com for more details on how to get your hands on the September Edition.

REASON #1 TEXAS (AND TEXAS MONTHLY) LOVES COLLEGE FOOTBALL

It's the Fans

All umpteen million of them, screaming and shouting and stomping and yelling and singing. And clapping and jumping and rooting...

By Brian D. Sweany

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If the Aggies and Longhorns face off in November without a single person in the stands to cheer, hiss, boo, or make that horse laughing sound, does the game exist? What would college football be without the fans? Not much more than a bunch of guys throwing a ball around. The game takes its greatness from the fact that so many people care so much about it. It’s the fans who convey the meaning, the true partisans, the ones who grew up wearing the colors, who save their money for season tickets, who plan their Saturdays around kickoff, who inherited their tailgating spot, who travel to away games, who cheer themselves hoarse during every quarter, who can tell you where they were for the past five bowl games their team played, who can sing their alma mater, who try to indoctrinate their children with team-branded onesies and bibs, who have way too many different clothes to choose from on game day, who obsessively listen to talk radio following a loss hoping for an explanation or gloat through the sports page the morning after a win, who have classic games on video, who have missed or rescheduled important life events because they interfered with a critical game, who know that it’s all in good fun but can’t help but stiffen a little bit when introduced, even many years after graduation, to someone who went to a rival school.

Texas is blessed with a lot of fans who fit most of that description. So when texas monthly sent out the call over Facebook and Twitter that we were looking for students from the state’s major colleges to appear in a photograph for our football issue, the response was predictably enthusiastic. Emails, tweets, and photos poured in from people bragging about their work as Longhorn Hellraisers and alums showing off pictures of their personalized license plates. Many hearts were broken during the scheduling process. One particularly zealous TCU fan (immortalized in a photo of him waving a Texas flag next to Coach Gary Patterson after 2009’s Clemson game) was in a wedding party and could not make it. To the cover shoot.

On the day of the shoot, our fans descended on Austin from all corners of the state to show off their pride and engage in a little close-range trash talk (we admit to taking a special delight in placing the A&M cadets right next to the burnt orange crew). Joshua Brito, a 21-year-old media advertising major at the University of Texas at El Paso, had driven straight from El Paso the night before in his dad’s UTEP-orange Hummer. “I’ve been going to Miner games since I was a kid,” says Brito, who’s holding a UTEP flag and wearing a priceless expression. “It’s something my family has done every fall. I felt honored to represent our school in the photograph.”

For the next four hours, as photographer Randal Ford (Texas A&M, class of 2004) snapped away, they jostled against one another, shouted, sang, argued about the upcoming season, and generally demonstrated why it is we love college football in Texas so much. It’s the fans.

BeanCounterGrad'03 · August 12, 2011

One of the first things I noticed was that all four Big12 school are on the left (front cover) and the rest of us are on the right (fold out) of the cover. Can't say that I'm surprised.

Still excited to see it and can't wait to read the article.

Edited August 12, 2011 by BeanCounterGrad'03

UNTcrazy727 · August 12, 2011

You can barely tell that we're there.... :notfair:

DeepGreen · August 12, 2011

Anyone surprised at the two shades of green our fan is displaying? Doesn't matter. I'm happy our fans took the time to represent the University of North Texas.