Postmortem on USC

Short version: You need to go in '16.

Fans were very cordial. We had wimmens hollering out their car windows at us, "Welcome to Columbia!". Yeah, I can see that happening in Lubbock. It is entirely possible, of course, that they wouldn't have been as nice if they expected a 24-pt loss. But I don't think so - these were good people.

Very nice town with good eats. We ate at the Blue Marlin Wednesday night - the place was packed with Aggies, food (mostly seafood offerings) was delicious. It's in a nice area of town, where you obviously want to walk around. Outside was a band that was quite good. I thought the fiddler was going to catch on fire playing "Orange Blossom Special". That was epic - Charlie Daniels wouldn't do it any better.

I've seen fans of both teams whining about Yell Practice. My best guess is they weren't there. I originally thought holding it at the State House was a bad idea. But after going - it was perfect. The location drew hundreds of USC students defending their turf and shouting down the miked-up yell leaders. Impressive effort . Yell practice went off w/o a hitch, but it may be a good thing that the state troopers were out in force. We talked to a dozen or so students afterwards and they were all very friendly, curious about A&M. Good time. The only downer for me was watching the junior yell leaders hump the concrete. What the hell was that? Those guys can obviously do actual pushups. Why don't they?

Game day we ate at Maurice's BBQ. A bigger surprise than the game final score was that the mustard-based BBQ was actually quite good. I have no idea how.

The only downer of the trip other than pathetic pseudo-pushups was the traffic to and especially from the stadium. If not doing a real tailgate, take an ice chest full of beer in your trunk, a few chairs, and sit around for a few hours after the game. You'll thank me... well, actually, you won't, because you won't know the hellacious traffic you missed.

I'll definitely be going back. Great trip, and it would have been w/o the very pleasant surprise at the stadium.

ETA: I forgot to mention the stadium experience. Jackie tried to tell everybody that Williams-Brice rivaled Kyle Field for noise and atmosphere. I haven't always agreed with Sherrill, but he was correct about that. That place was pumped up, rocking, and loud. If the game had been closer... I don't want to think about that.

And another: I actually thought A&M would win, no lie. I certainly didn't expect that final score, but I did think A&M would win. But when they trotted out MOH guy and USC student Kyle Carpenter and had him talk a bit before the game, I thought "Oh shite. Didn't see that coming." And then Kenny Hill overcame the Kyle Carpenter jinx.