My experience at UT Ticket Pull was memorable to say the least.
The most famous football rivalry in Texas football is hands-down TAMU vs UT. When I found out that Texas A&M is going to play University of Texas for the first time in over ten years, I knew I had to go. Not only that, but this game is the last game of my senior year at TAMU.
I had never camped out for a football game, so I was excited to try it for the first time. I knew that according to the website, camping out starts the Sunday before at 6 AM. However, upon exiting the New Mexico game, I found out people were already lined up, despite it supposedly starting 6 AM the next day. Rather than getting to the ticket pull lines at 5 AM like we planned, we showed up around 4 AM, and the lines were already horrendous.
Despite the early morning, the experience of camping out was actually a lot of fun. We set up a tent and chairs, hung around while snacking and playing cards. The weather was humid, constantly switching from hot and sunny to windy and rainy. Overall, I enjoyed camping out for 28 hours until the ticket window opened.
When I went to bed Sunday night, I had no idea that I would wake to absolute chaos in the morning. I woke up a little after 5 AM and walked to the lines to find my camping partner. Instead of lines, I saw a massive horde of bodies packed like sardines. I quickly decided to pack up my campsite and take her place in line. It was 6:30 by the time I got everything packed in my truck and pushed my way to take over our spot in line. There were so many people all closely packed together, so we had no choice but to become friendly with each other. Once the ticket booths opened, the line would move about every 15 minutes (we started timing it), giving me and my new-found friends hope.
As time marched on, we quickly realized that the predicted storm was not going away. Instead of putting on rain jackets and grabbing umbrellas, my new friends and I found ourselves under a bright orange canopy leftover from the camp out. We lucked out. Not only were we under the canopy and protected from the heavy downpour. The people around us were picking up the canopy and moving it when the line moved forward. The closeness of the line at 6 AM was NOTHING compared to under the canopy. I had a guy sleeping standing up on my backpack. It was so crowded that I had to open the water bottle of my new friend because she could not get her arm up high enough to open it herself.
As we were enjoying our time under the canopy, internally laughing at all the poor people who were not blessed with being in the right place at the right time, we did not realize that water was pooling in calf length puddles until it was too late. When I first felt the icky colored water seep into my sock, I almost left the line at that moment.
Spoiler alert, I stuck it through. After the hour-long closure for the lightning in the area, the line finally started moving again. At this point, I had been standing for over 5 hours, so time quickly began to blend together. I lost my new friends. But after some point in my lack of sleep, food, and bathroom break delusion, I saw the barricades to the window. I had one of my friends in my group cheering me on from the sides. And after almost 9 hours of standing in line, I had 9 UT vs TAMU tickets in my hand, even if they were third deck tickets.
To the girls that I got trapped under the canopy with, you got me through ticket pull. Let’s go get coffee sometime.