Game 11: Texas
So It Goes!
It didn’t strike me until I sat down to start writing this that I entered and exited Memorial Stadium for the sixth and final time in 2022 last Saturday. That’s all that we get, only six opportunities to be there in-person for Jayhawks football at that stadium. A stadium so large, so expensive to maintain, so ingrained in the geography of the University of Kansas, and it’s only used for its primary purpose six times in a calendar year, maybe seven in some seasons depending upon non-conference scheduling and the way in which the 9-game in-conference schedule falls.
There were only 78 days which passed between the first time I entered the stadium on September 2nd and the last time that I exited it on November 19th – I checked on one of those websites which calculates distances between dates. That is fewer than three months, and barely over eleven weeks. On a calendar, I can look back and see how short of a timeframe this has been, but on another level, that doesn’t feel right. My philosophy surrounding this team, this blog, and the entire phenomenon of college football has changed so much between driving up I-70 from Johnson County on the Friday of the home opener to when I walked out of the stadium last Saturday. In six games over 78 days, I felt emotions I’d never felt in my adult life and saw crowds and sights I hadn’t seen in over a decade in a stadium defined by so many highly impassioned experiences I’ve had over 27 years of life. I have changed and grown somewhat as a person because of the time I spent at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it happened over the course of only six Saturdays.1
It is paradoxical to some extent – It’s one of my favorite places to be, though, at most in my life, I set foot inside it maybe ten or eleven times per year2, though in some years I went in there only once3, and most of those days involved watching the football team I came to see get blown out. This is a place of nostalgia, joy, pain, connection, commiseration, and so much else, but I doubt that I’ve stepped foot in there even one hundred times to this point in my lifetime
The sixth home game, the eleventh total game of the season, was a disappointing return to what I’ve known to expect from KU for most of my adult life. This was a blowout delivered by a Texas team that outclassed the Jayhawks in nearly every facet of the game. This game was, more or less, finished sometime in the middle of the second quarter. I was curious about how I’d react to one of these, given that I’ve grown somewhat accustomed to the team’s competence over 2022. Would one blowout affect me worse than the 7-8 blowouts per season affected me due to the expectations being different? Would I be able to contextualize it and not be so torn apart as I once was? Would I welcome the cold familiar embrace of ineptitude back among so much newness and uncertainty brought about by the competence of this year?
It seems like everything about this game happened so quickly that I didn’t get the chance to feel anything all that intensely. This was the first game this season in which I didn’t feel like I had to prepare myself all that much beforehand. Most of the logistics were figured out on the morning of the game, rather than doing any sort of discussion in the lead-up. We got to the parking lot, visited some family and friends at a tailgate, watched some of the band concert, then basically moseyed through security and up to our seats in leisurely fashion, getting there right in time for player introductions and the band’s pregame show. For as much as I complained about everything about the stadium experience early on (the slowness of the lines, the hit-and-miss placement and availability of the concessions), this was as smooth as it could be.
I never really felt the weight of this being the final home game of the season, this being senior day, this being the last time I’d be there in 2022. I didn’t really get the chance to start feeling anything, as the team was obviously overmatched basically from the opening drive. This was basically never a competition. Our defense forced a punt on their first drive, then Jalon Daniels narrowly avoided his first pass in five games getting returned for a touchdown, then once Texas got the ball back, Bijan Robinson took over.
I found myself repeating myself. “Look, he’s really good. He’s a projected first-round pick, high first-round pick, which isn’t normal for a running back anymore. He’s their best player, according to some he’s one of the top five players in college football right now, and what he’s very good at is exactly what the KU defense has struggled with all season.” I wasn’t surprised that he broke out for 243 yards and four touchdowns, but I was unhappy to see it.
Outside of this specific blog entry, I imagine that this game’s primary outcome in my personal context will be the performance by Robinson. I have seen some fantastic players have great games against the Kansas Jayhawks in my time. I saw Tyreek Hill take a game-winning kickoff back when he was with Oklahoma State, I saw Tyler Lockett get multiple touchdowns with K-State, I saw Xavien Howard get an interception with Baylor, I saw Joe MIxon score a few times with Oklahoma, I saw Baker Mayfield three times4. Maybe, in a few years, when he’s winning rushing titles in the NFL, I can say that I watched Bijan Robinson get 200+ yards and dominate my team in-person.
But that’s about all I’ll take away, sadly. We even left early, despite my protests. It was cold, it was 31-0 at half, me and my friends are all ex-band people who had no choice but to sit through blowouts like these over the course of our collegiate careers, so it’s sort of a perk of growing up that we don’t have to experience these to the end anymore.5 Much of the sting that could have had a presence this season, especially late on in this stretch of one win among five losses that’s ended it, is the manner in which I’ve tried to keep a sense of perspective. I expected, at most, four wins, and they’ve had six. I imagined we might go to a bowl game in a few seasons, and they’re headed to one ahead of schedule.
This would have been a more robust post had this actually been the last time I saw the Jayhawks in-person in 2022, but I know it’s not. We are going to a bowl game6, and I will be there for it.
At this point, I’m disappointed about that specific game, but I’m still very pleased with the season. I still think it was a good decision to follow them so closely this year, and, mostly, I’m just glad that the year won’t end with this particularly bitter taste in my mouth.
Well, five Saturdays and one Friday.
I’m estimating based off of marching band in 2015: Spring Game, then seven home games, then one or two stadium rehearsals, traditions night, and picture day,
2019 and 2021
Baker’s the weird one here in that I saw the moment in which his career trajectory completely changed the first time, when, as a Freshman quarterback at Texas Tech, he suffered an injury that knocked him out of the rest of the 2013 season. He put up 383 yards and four touchdowns in 2015, and then during his Heisman season of 2017, he got very mad and infamously grabbed his crotch. Sadly I did not see the crotch-grabbing with my own eyes. It’s a shame that the shine has sort of come off of his career over the past two years, he’s a fascinating player and the only player I had the chance to see in Memorial Stadium three times.
For the record I would’ve stayed to the end had I been there alone for the sake of this post and this post alone. Perhaps I would’ve developed the childish despair I’ve lacked this year had I sat there over the course of the third and fourth quarters… But it did feel nice not to have to endure the whole thing. I don’t know whether the early-twenties version of myself would reprimand me for not being hardcore enough to stick it out or appreciate that I was able to leave.
As things really devolved in the second quarter, Mike and I found ourselves repeating this fact to ourselves for the sake of emotional regulation
BONUS IMAGE:
The one at the top was the crowd at kick, this is the crowd at the beginning of the third quarter. It’s mottled but a big chunk of the crowd that was left was wearing burnt orange. If I may stand on my soapbox: I like the traveling Texas fans more than most in the Big XII. I have never had a bad experience with them. If I may do a brief Big XII opposing fans power rankings based off of my experiences with them:
Oklahoma State - In 2013 they gave us a standing ovation after we did our halftime show on the road there, which is the only time that ever happened to us. This year, their band clapped for our fans as we carried the goalposts out of the stadium.
Texas - It might be that they haven’t been the powerhouse they were in the 2000s, but I’ve never had that bad of an experience with a Texas fan in Lawrence. Austinite toxicity towards the Kansas Jayhawks recently has been hyperfocused on KU alumnus Andrew Wiebe.
TCU - They traveled so well for that Week 6 game, they had a presence on College Gameday, and they really could’ve been total pricks in the stands if they’d wanted to be, but I had no issues with them.
Baylor - They’re baptists, so they have to be nice to your face no matter what. I’m curious how BYU fans will be in this regard
Oklahoma - They travel very well and they’d compliment our band as we walked out of the stadium after getting blown out again
West Virginia - Not a lot of them travel out to Lawrence for gamedays, which makes sense, but I never had a bad interaction with them
Texas Tech - Same thing as WVU
Iowa State - None of these cursory rankings count the bands of any of these schools, each of which were so nice and so warm and so gracious to us. We’d hang out with the Iowa State band during the Big XII women’s tournaments, I have nothing but respect and appreciation for them (as well as the band of the school to follow this one). Their fans just fucking hate us, though, and they’re quite vocal about that.
Kansas State - This is to say nothing of the character of the Kansas State fanbase or alumni or students. They’re an in-state rival and they treat us as such. I only came in a year after the incident in which our band marched off towards their student section in 2012 and was greeted by all manners of birds flipped and things thrown from the crowd. Otherwise they were just normal mean to us in a controlled and understandable manner befitting an in-state rivalry. I admire their ability to fit “Fuck KU” into any situation. What they lack in the creativity of that specific chant (especially compared to Missouri’s “M-I-Z / FUCK-K-U!” chant of days gone by) they make up for in their creativity in its execution.