Back in October, I wrote an article where I ranked the College Football Playoff games based on location and my willingness to travel there. I mentioned how I didn’t even care about football. Upon reflection, I realize that is not entirely true: I love football, when I’m watching a winning team. Call me a bandwagon, but I will tell you that I grew up listening to Carrie Underwood at around 5 PM on Sundays singing about Sunday Night Football. I cried when the 49ers lost the Super Bowl against the Ravens in 2013. I can usually tell you what penalty was called and why. I stand 3 feet from the television like my dad does, nervously watching the last 7 seconds of any football game that miraculously turns in 17 minutes.
And, most importantly, I’m writing this from my Notes app with a purple cowboy hat at my feet on the plane home from Texas. I kept that promise from November, where as long as UW was winning, you would see me at a Bowl game.
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Student tickets came out for the National Football Championships in Houston, Texas, the Tuesday after New Year’s Day. The email came through without warning, and I was conveniently working on my laptop as the workaholic I am. I hustled to login to the Dawg Pack portal, whip out my credit card, and smash the purchase button. No thoughts, just submit. In less than 2 minutes, I got a confirmation email telling me that I, Margaret E. O’Brien, was going to Houston. I was ecstatic.
The excitement quickly faded and the nerves kicked in once I started looking at the horrendously expensive flights to Texas. I booked, there and then, the cheapest possible flights to San Antonio which is three hours west of NRG Stadium.
I had no idea how I was actually getting from San Antonio to Houston or even who I was going with. I was frantically calling anyone who might have gotten tickets. It seemed that every single person in the entire UDistrict was still asleep. I texted a friend in full panic mode and explained my situation. He gave me the contact information of his friend who was also one of the lucky 500 students with tickets and knew no one going to Houston. This is where I found Emma.
I met Emma for the first time on January 3rd. The game was on January 8th. This was a quick turnaround, especially for two people who had never spoken before, let alone traveled together. Yet, after five minutes of chatting at the HUB, we booked hotels and a rental car and even crafted a Pinterest page to cosplay SEC girls during our trip. Alas, I was going to Texas with a stranger, just for the sake of college football.
The next time I saw Emma was at the San Antonio Airport. We got a sporty Mazda rental with red leather seats and drove to Houston, stopping only for the best sandwich of my life at Subway. That night, we did what we know how to do best – go out on the town and flirt for drinks – but the most important event in the UW calendar was the next day, so at 2:30 AM, we called it a night.
After morning crepes and a latte to revive myself, I put on my little purple dress, denim jacket, gold cowboy hat, and UW pins and began dancing around the hotel room to Luke Bryan and Nicki Minaj on the same playlist. We headed to the stadium, heckling UMich fans and befriending anyone wearing purple in sight. We were there over three hours early, which landed us seats in the fifth row of the student section behind the field goal post. I made friends with the security guard and the frat guys behind me.
We kicked off, and, from there, the game immediately went downhill. By the start of the third quarter, the student section had zero morale. We had one touchdown and two field goals, and Jim Harbaugh’s team was trampling over us. Hope was lost; we knew our legendary season was coming to an end. We chanted as loud as possible for Penix on his last play of his six-year college football career. JJ McCarthy kneeled, the clock ran down, and it was all over.
As Husky fans exited the stadium, heads down and defeated, thunder and lightning struck in Houston. Emma and I made our dramatic, somber exit – fitting for the weather – and headed back towards our hotel. We ordered midnight UberEats and watched TikTok and rotted our sorrows away.
The next morning was Tuesday, and we headed back to San Antonio, where we were scheduled to fly back to Seattle on Wednesday, just a week after meeting each other. We explored the vibrant, friendly city of San Antonio, where we met more frazzled Husky fans and shared our feelings of heartache and frustration. I guess despair really brings camaraderie to football fans.
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While we may not have come back to Seattle with a trophy and bragging rights, I gained a friend, a new appreciation of Texas, and stories upon stories. The game truly was a core college memory. In regards to my earlier article, I ranked Houston as second for Bowl cities I would want to travel to, especially for “Michael Penix Jr., and for the sake of my ego.” I described Houston as a “food and cultural hub of the Southwest,” which is true if you discount how massive this metropolitan area actually is. Relative to Seattle and San Francisco at 84 and 49 square miles, respectively, Houston is humongous at 640 square miles. We Ubered everywhere, which detracted a bit from the hustle and bustle of the city. But, those thirty-six hours in Houston were really about the National Championship. I even made several appearances on the jumbotron to make it all worth it.
Would I do it all again next year? Absolutely.