In October, my good friend Pete passed away, the week of Red River. Following his funeral, his family gave me his Longhorn shirt. Before I explain why the gift meant so much to me, let me explain that Pete's family is like football coaching royalty in Texas, and his lovely wife—who is like a second mom to me and my wife—likes to give me a hard time about the Longhorns. She also has a few bones to pick with Texas, but those are anecdotes for paid subscribers only. Pete pole-vaulted at Texas back in the day, and since nobody could tell him what to do, despite his family's ire toward Texas' top brass, the shirt stuck around in his closet, probably the only piece of burnt orange paraphernalia in their West Texas home.
I'd gotten to know him well over the past few years through being close friends with his daughter and her fiancé. Even though Pete was of slight build and wiry strength, he was intimidating as hell, the embodiment of a tough and rugged West Texas masculinity you'd find in an Elmer Kelton novel. Through his Marlboro Man exterior, he saw people for who they really were, and I was proud that we could call each other friends. When Pete called you Pal, you felt as if a more loquacious person wrote a mushy tribute song in your honor. He was a giver and the type of person whose gruffness would scare little kids at first, but then become their favorite person later after they realized Pete was the man who would pass out treats and share his secret stash of ice cream. My favorite bit about Pete, he was ejected from the 2005 National Championship for punching a USC fan who insulted his wife. But in classic Pete fashion his exile didn’t last long and he still got to see the legendary ending when the cops let him back in the Rose Bowl after realizing what an asshole the Trojan fan was and how cool Pete was. All in all, this isn't an article about Pete, but I loved him, and so did a lot of people, and I am proud to own something of his now that he's gone. It’s even better that I can hear what his response would be if I told him thank you for the shirt: “why do you want that shitty old shirt anyway?” I was looking at his shirt today and thankful that I was the overinvested, emotional, tempestuous Longhorn fan that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law thought should own Pete's shirt. It was in this gift from them that I got to thinking about how sports fandom is just a passing down of literal and metaphorical shirts through the generations.
There’s a chant in English soccer that angry fans will yell at underperforming players or coaches: “you’re not fit to wear the shirt.” I like thinking of fanhood under the lens of “the shirt.” It means something to put on your team’s shirt, to share in it with anyone else that dons your colors. It’s a signal that we’re in this together, through thick and thin. The uninitiated don’t understand what losses to Maryland feel like, or coach firings, or the flaunting of empty calorie core values and false alarms of being back, but if we’re wearing the same shirt, we get one another. Fandom of college sports is especially emotional because it’s typically rooted in something deeper, it connects you back to a formative time in life and who you were back then. You’re a fan of a college team because it’s the team you loved as a kid or where you went to school or maybe it’s in the city where you ended up in your 20s. It would be really weird if at 33 I decided to start loving Penn State, but a little less weird if I started to love the Steelers. I have a good friend who never went to a football game while we went to UT together, she wasn’t interested, but she was the first person to text me when we got into the playoff, “let’s f#cking go!” She hasn’t lived in Texas since graduation, but the Longhorns connect her to that time, those people, those memories.
Fandom is the best form of tribalism that humans have ever established and it’s a lasting remnant of our former lives as nomadic tribes and warring factions. Through those centuries of evolution, fandom is one of the beautiful things that has grown out of who humans used to be. We no longer live off the land and have lost many things that our ancestors taught us, but the next generation still can inherit the love of a team from us. On the surface that might not seem important, especially if we’re just teaching them to scream at a TV, but loving something enough to share it and make memories around it is what matters. There’s a lot of things I can’t teach my kids that I wish that I could, and I don’t know how many heirlooms we have that would net a big return, but we can love the Longhorns together and wear the shirts together as long as they want to. Through that, we’ll have a ton of memories, heartbreak and glory both, but memories just the same. My son is obsessed with the Longhorns right now. I should say that he’s first an utter fanatic for Earl Campbell and he loves to pretend he’s Earl and stiff arm me, a helpless defender, into the ground. His love of Earl started two years ago when I told him that the Tyler Rose was like a real-life Transformer. That comment piqued his interest and when I found him a two-minute highlight video of Earl’s punishing runs, he instantly loved Earl and later the Longhorns. Lately, he will ask me how many games the Longhorns have won this season and I get to glowingly respond “12, maybe more still.” He then asks me how many the Sooners have won and I say “10, less than the Longhorns,” and he asks me how many the bad Aggies have won and I say “seven,” and he responds “that’s not very many wins” and my heart is full. Starting to love the Longhorns together, to be excited about them together well into the Fall allowed us to make so many memories together, from going to the games, to talking about them, to tackling each other in the backyard as he’s Earl Campbell and I’m Travis Kelce distracted by Taylor Swift (don’t ask).
Times like these are what’s so special about this upcoming month for Texas fans, there’s so many memories to be made around the Sugar Bowl versus Washington and hopefully beyond. There's an opportunity for players to become legends among Longhorn fans where decades from now, you might simply mention a name like Adonai Mitchell or Anthony Hill (whoever makes an unforgettable play or creates a lasting moment) and anyone you're speaking to will immediately know what you're talking about. Maybe there will be new shirts printed for the Longhorns and Texas fans that read “champions,” that aren’t shipped away to the farthest corners of the Earth. If so, those shirts will contain a multitude of memories and those memories will be passed on and on through the generations.
So true. This applies to many things that lift us out of our differences and bring us together, even for just a few moments. Bonding that has roots on the past. Go Ponies! Go Horns!
The way you connect with your readers, even those of us who aren’t die hard Longhorn fans is amazing. This article reminded me of a time long ago when I was coaching my youngest son’s basketball team. He proudly stated that he was going to play for UCLA and that I would be the coach. Obviously neither happened, but I haven’t thought about that time of innocence for many years. Thanks!