Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > December > 23 > Entry
Mini-Season bonding as Longorns beat Spartans
Sports fans who sit in adjacent seats cement personal bonds over the seasons, even the decades. Some Longhorns football followers, for instance, have purchased affiliated season packages since the 1950s. Think of the witnessed victories and defeats, the changing attitudes toward coaches and marquee players. At some point, the shared births and deaths, arrivals and departures, feuds and friendships in a particular section approximate a family relationship.
Chris and Karla Boedeker
I felt that way during the 1980s and ’90s when I purchased, with friends, regular seats not far from the home bench for Texas women’s basketball team. This was during the Jody Conradt era, when championships always seemed possible, even if the last national title came in 1986. At times, relations in our section resembled a soap opera, given the shifting tensions and alliances among the casually connected ticket holders. (For most of one season, I simply moved across the Erwin Center to sit with newer friends.)
For the past three seasons, American-Statesman designer G.W. Babb and I have grabbed mini-season passes for men’s basketball. In an effort to build attendance during the drab winter months, Rick Barnes and crew offer six games for the astounding price of $60, give or take fees. We are now so attached to upper-berth Section 94, scraping our heads against the arena ceiling, it’s almost painful to move down toward the court when better seats go unfilled.
Carol Chisholm and Matt Pore
No threat of that last night, as the No. 2 Longhorns took on the No. 9 Michigan State Spartans. Just about every one of the 16,000+ seats were full of writhing, restless fans, some rooting for the green, not the burnt orange. You’ve probably read about the game, if you didn’t see it: Lots of sloppy play, but also some offensive and defensive heroics as UT cranked out another victory over a traditional basketball power.
As soon as I found our new seats on the very last row of Section 94, spiky-haired Chris Boedeker exhaled: “I’m not very happy about this.” He and cheerful wife Karla liked the pricing on the mini-season pass, but not the actual location, tangentially related to the visitors’ bench. As Chris, a claims manager for Mercury Insurance, scrutinized the game guide with the seriousness of a b-ball buff, Karla, an account manager for Hoover’s, clapped politely for Michigan State.
What? What? “Oh, we went to Indiana, so there’s some Big 10 loyalty left,” Kris explained. Hopefully, that will evaporate when the Horns steer into the Big 12 run.
Antonio Rodriguez and Amanda Bramblett (good sports on the Erwin Center staff)
On our other side were Carol Chisholm and Matt Pore. A graduate of Texas State University-San Marcos, Pore also revealed a deeper knowledge of this year’s team than I possess, and enthusiastically broadcast his delight with the Horns or his disgust with the officials. Chisholm, an actual UT grad, played along convincingly. Animated Pore joked about wanting Coach Barnes to notice him as a potential walk-on, not likely where we sat.
The couple works for First American Spatial Solutions, which provides insurance companies with information about flood plains and such. One of my areas of interest! So now G.W. and I know our seat-mates, who bought into the “very, very cheap” offer, too. Let the potential bonding begin.
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