Gets me about all these offseason rankings and award lists ESPN puts out? They grade us on portal hauls and recruiting stars but they never factor in what I saw with my own eyes back in the late 80s at old Amon G. Carter Stadium. I remember sitting in those metal bleachers that would burn your legs in September when Coach Sullivan had us running the veer and the whole place would shake when we got a stop on third down. The concrete steps, the smell of hot dogs and cigar smoke, the way the south end zone used to echo when the band played. That stadium had character. It had soul. You could feel the history in every crack in those old seats.
Now they talk about our "facility upgrades" and the new video board and I just shake my head. They tore down the old press box where I watched LaDainian Tomlinson run wild against Tulsa in 99 and replaced it with some glass tower that looks like a corporate headquarters. The new stadium is nice I guess but it does not have the same feel. It does not have the same smell. You cannot manufacture that kind of atmosphere with architecture. You build it with years of sweat and sacrifice and players who actually cared about the purple on their chest instead of their NIL valuation.
I will take those rickety old bleachers and the blazing Texas sun over any climate controlled luxury suite they build today. That is where we learned what it meant to be a Horned Frog. That is where we earned our stripes. Not in some glossy recruiting brochure.