Newcomers - Difference between UT and Texas A&M - important distinction! (Austin: schools, university)

[scongress1234]

Me and a buddy figured this out after a long chat at Rudy's.....

Remember, there is a reason for the enmity between the schools.....
Try wearing a A&M shirt in Austin, specially around the university, and see what happens.....

Every Texan child, at birth, is determined to be either a University of Texas Longhorn or a Texas A&M Aggie. There is a ritual involved that I won't get into. Suffice it to say that if you are Longhorn, you think Aggies are dumb and vice-versa. It was discovered you could just plug in Longhorn and Aggie for Jew and Catholic or whatever, and voila! Instant joke fodder! It doesn't stop there, though.
If you are lucky enough to actually attend the school you have inexplicably been rooting for your entire life, you must cheer on your team's mascot at the football games. UT's mascot is, unsurprisingly, a Longhorn steer named Bevo. Like the majority of the school's students, Bevo spends most of his life in a drugged-up stupor. They plunk the poor thing down on the sideline during games to incite pep, but that's about all he does.
Texas A&M, being a little more war-like and well, nutty, has a collie named Reveille that they treat like some kind of god. There is a special unit of the "Corps," which is Aggiespeak for crazy weird R.O.T.C., assigned to care for it. They trot this dog around campus, and if it barks during class, well, that class is dismissed. For real. Corps members must salute it. When one dies, they bury it under the goal post.
Kids tease each other based on their choice of school and mascot. This is usually pretty puerile, to the tune of "you suck/no you suck". Any Longhorn kid lucky enough to be exposed to the song "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" through music class is golden, though, because of the line "He's in the army now, he's blowing Reveille, he's the Boogie Woogie bugle boy from company B." Hours of entertainment. It's almost enough to make one miss race-based humor.
So that's it. That's what you outlanders have been missing. It should shed some light on the whole "Republic of Texas" phenomenon. Now you can wink knowingly at your ex-pat friends from Texas. You've got their number. Don't Mess with Texas indeed. And remember, hook 'em, horns!

[Lucaseve]

Your posts continually get more interesting. Thanks for the info. I'm in town for my first recon visit next week.

[Biscuits]

Originally Posted by scongress1234

Me and a buddy figured this out after a long chat at Rudy's.....

Your buddy and you need to focus more on figuring out peace in the Middle East the next time you get together.

IMHO, the interpretation of the differences between the the two schools is about what I would expect from a person who attended neither one.

And for the record, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happens to a kid wearing an A&M t-shirt on campus. People would be more interested in listening to their mp3 player or talking on their cell phone to even make eye contact with the individual.

[scongress1234]

Originally Posted by Biscuits

Your buddy and you need to focus more on figuring out peace in the Middle East the next time you get together.

IMHO, the interpretation of the differences between the the two schools is about what I would expect from a person who attended neither one.

And for the record, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happens to a kid wearing an A&M t-shirt on campus. People would be more interested in listening to their mp3 player or talking on their cell phone to even make eye contact with the individual.

I disagree......football is king in Texas...and UT football is king in Austin.....I wouldn't say a bloke would get assaulted wearing a sooner
or aggie shirt, but it might raise a few eyebrows on gameday...I've gotten the hook em horns sign thousands of miles away on vacation, so its not even just a texas thing....

BTW, this was supposed to be a joke....my god, doesn't anyone laugh in Austin....its a great place, but I honestly don't see a sense of humor playing much of a part here......if I offended someone by being funny, gee, sorry, i guess..

And its a damn straight fact that UT football is mighty serious stuff in the fall in Austin.....not many MP3 navel gazing folks around then, for sure!

[centralaustinite]

Please, you have to know something about a subject to make a good joke! Would I try to make a joke about the Chicago Bears or the difference between Cubs fans and White Sox fans, no!

[i29gtaylor]

Cubs fans rule; Sox fans don't...

[AustinTexan]

scongress is not entirely off base with his comments about the 2 schools but trust me, the UT faithful don't like seeing students on campus with a&m shirts. I have personally witenessed several students who I'm sure were graduate students, being harassed by others on campus. One incident almost ended up in a physical altercation if it weren't for people stepping in to stop it. It's not very smart for you to wear the colors of one of our biggest rivals on our campus, actually, you'd have to be pretty stupid. This is Austin, so don't disrespect what this city's foundation or a majority of it's citizens.

[Biscuits]

Originally Posted by AustinTexan

scongress is not entirely off base with his comments about the 2 schools but trust me, the UT faithful don't like seeing students on campus with a&m shirts. I have personally witenessed several students who I'm sure were graduate students, being harassed by others on campus. One incident almost ended up in a physical altercation if it weren't for people stepping in to stop it. It's not very smart for you to wear the colors of one of our biggest rivals on our campus, actually, you'd have to be pretty stupid. This is Austin, so don't disrespect what this city's foundation or a majority of it's citizens.

I'll take your word for that but I must say it is something I never saw even once in my 4++ years at UT.

Possibly you frequent the areas of the UT campus that are populated by the real bad ass tough guys. Quite the rarity at a school that most in this state can't come close to attending without displaying a good deal of academic excellence. Usually, tough guys and those who can actually get in to UT are mutually exclusive.

I also took a class at A&M - post graduating from UT - and found their student body to be totally normal (with the exception of the vast minority that constitute the Corps of Cadets) and would happily go there today in a burnt orange Vince Young jersey with the full expectation of having nothing illegal done to me.

[b. frank]

Originally Posted by scongress1234

And its a damn straight fact that UT football is mighty serious stuff in the fall in Austin.....not many MP3 navel gazing folks around then, for sure!

True story:
My wife works on the UT campus. On the day of a big UT vs. U of OK (I think - maybe it was Nebraska) game, there was also a big rally of bicyclists on/around campus. There was a group of "punk" cyclists hanging around her bus stop and one of them was a topless woman hanging out in the crowd like everyone else. Nobody commented.
However...
As soon as someone spotted a couple of people wearing OK colors, my wife heard, "Wow, that is brave!"

[Biscuits]

Originally Posted by b. frank

True story:
My wife works on the UT campus. On the day of a big UT vs. U of OK (I think - maybe it was Nebraska) game, there was also a big rally of bicyclists on/around campus. There was a group of "punk" cyclists hanging around her bus stop and one of them was a topless woman hanging out in the crowd like everyone else. Nobody commented.
However...
As soon as someone spotted a couple of people wearing OK colors, my wife heard, "Wow, that is brave!"

Go to any UT football game and you will see thousands of people wearing the colors of the opposing team. Then they go get drunk on 6th/4th Street after the game - still wearing those colors. In Columbus, Ohio, that might get you urinated on; in Austin nobody cares.