a Sunday story (6)

With our recent basketball loss still weighing heavily on my mind, I've decided to look ahead with a hopeful and renewed attitude...football season is only about 5 months away!

The Aggies open their season at home on September 1st against Montana State. In fact, their first three games will be played at Kyle Field. What fun Aggie football games are!

A little Aggie football 101 is in order, I do believe.

1. We stand the entire game. Well, you can sit while the other school's band is on the field. Besides that, you stand...on bleachers that tend to, well, sway. It's the whole Twelth Man thing.
2. We have Yell Leaders. Not cheer leaders. Yell Leaders. And, we yell. We yell at the games and at the Midnight Yell Practices before the games.
3. We "Maroon Out". Now this says only one game a season is designated as the "Maroon Out" game (must be some new Army thing :) I really thought every game was "Maroon Out" now, but I was only around for the first 2 years of it.
4. Before home games, there is always a Corps march-in which is essentially a parade where the Corps of Cadets outfits march from the Quadrangle to Kyle Field.
5. The highlight of the games are the halftimes put on by the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band.

Those are the basics. As with all things A&M, there is so much more to it. Explaining what is so incredible about an Aggie football game is challenging without actually being at a game.

I spent a couple years as a "regular" attendee to those games. Then, I met Bryan. Bryan was a member of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band. He played bass before I knew him. When we met, he had just made Bugle Rank...the guys who march with the bugles at the front of the band. Only he forgot to mention that to me. Our first "date" was to Parents' Weekend Yell Practice. This was also the first time he would march with the band as part of Bugle Rank. As a band date, I "marched" in with him at the front, but I had told everyone to look for me with the bass section...at the end. I straightened it all out by the time football season began and spent that year wearing dresses and extremely uncomfortable shoes to all the games...never know when you'll get some time on the jumbo-tron! Aggie football games are fun on their own. I was able to experience them at a whole new level that year. I've never done so many posed kisses. Oops..that reminds me of the most important Aggie football 101 lesson...we kiss when we score. Yep, that would be why you want to go to the game with someone you really like :) And, that would be why Bryan and I posed some of our kisses. The cameras liked to "catch" people kissing after an Aggie score and since we sat on the first row with the other Bugle Rank members and since there were usually only a couple other dates at the games, we posed our kisses quite a bit.

I don't think I've successfully described what it is like to actually be at a game. But, it is something Bryan and I love and something I hope our children will learn to love one day.