Weekend in Aggieland

This weekend, I went to College Station to get a taste of the culture at Texas A&M and to take in a football game. It was really cool. Everybody there was proud to be an Aggie and they had no problems showing it. The campus was really cool. It is huge. It takes about 20 minutes to get from one side of the campus to the other. While walking around on Saturday, we visited the Bonfire Memorial. It was a nice site. It looks somewhat similar to the Murrah building memorial in OKC. They did a great job with it. When they have football games, they have yell practice the night before called Midnight Yell. At A&M, they do not have cheerleaders. They have Yell Leaders. Whenever they want the crowd to do a yell, they start giving signals to the crowd (that you learn during orientation and at Yell Practices) and based on that signal, the crowd knows which yell to perform. So on Friday, we practiced all of the yells and the yell leaders told stories to inspire the crowd and to get the crowd pumped up for the game on Saturday. They were the most random stories that I have ever heard. One had to do with Canadians and the Citadel. I hoped that there weren't any Canadians in the crowd because I am sure that they would have been insulted by the story. The game was an interesting experience all in itself. First off, you have to stand the whole time because of the spirit of the 12th man. If a player were to be injured, then you have to be ready to go play. This came about back in the early 1900's when TAMC (at that time) only had 11 players total (just enough for a team) who had to play both defense and offense. A player got hurt during the game and they faced forfeiture if they could not get anyone else to play. A guy in the stands jumped up from the stands, suited up and joined the game. So at every game, all spectators (or really hard core fans) have to stand up and be ready to join the game if needed. Also, there was a lot of people there. The count for the night was 70k people. It showed it, but I was a little disappointed because I figured that they whole stadium would be filled to the brim like I hear that it usually is during games. They also had a jumbotron built. The picture was great and you could see everything in good detail, but every single video on there was "Brought to you by..." and it was just a little annoying. Overall, I had a great time. It was cool to see what happens at a different university. It kinda gave me an appreciation for my own...