This title of the entry might as well be "What does this mean to Texas fans?" Well, I would like to keep it short. This is the first time in 20 years that Texas is playing for the national championship. The last time Texas actually won the national championship was in 1970. During this span, Texas' archrivals Oklahoma had won four times.

Texas being a football power school and the third winningest school in college football to go without a national title for this long is an embarrassing drought. At one point during the nineties football wasn't part of weekly routines for Texas students, alums and alike. Football was reduced to a lesser role. But all this changed when John Mackovic was fired as head coach and Mack Brown was brought in from North Carolina to take over the football program. Bill Little, who handles Texas athletic public relations, told Mack Brown his first job is to make football in the university important again. So when Mack Brown was introduced as the new head football coach, he urged the fans to "Come Early, Be Loud, Stay Late, Wear Orange". This line is printed and can be seen on the back of t-shirts many students are wearing to the games.

Even since then, the expectations and pressure on the program to win national championship was mounting. Mack Brown brought the team back to national prominence. Football was the always in the topic of conversation on campus in fall. (I'm not blowing it up a bit. I have first hand experience in this. I was part of the conversation, of course. This gets more intense when approaching the Oklahoma game and to the end of the season) Since 2000, Texas was ranked in the top 10 every year in the preseason poll. More people are willing to pay to see the team play. As a result, the price of the tickets has been raising ever since. Still the alumni, Austin residents, students, faculties, and staff are willing to pay more to reserve a seat in the Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium. The public and alumni tickets are not easy to get. I don't know the exact figure for the season ticket package. I'm sure that merely paying the already expensive ticket price is not enough. Contributions to some sort of school foundations will help put a candidate to the front end of the list. Well, still no guarantee.

Aside from the tons of money that the program has received from ticket revenue, television rights, sponsorships, and price money, alumni are willing to pour in extra money to ensure the football program to stay as one of the top in the country, if not the top. The team gets top-notch state-of-the-art training facilities, both indoors and outdoors.

Students are crazier when it comes to ticket grabbing. Students are paying somewhere between $70 for the Oklahoma game to well above $200 for the Rose Bowl tickets. For those who are less fortunate not to be able to get them directly from the school ticket distribution, the market price for such tickets can approach $400 each, depending how good the seat is. Some students would organize road trip to drive to road games. The games can be as close as Texas A&M in College Station, or as far as Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio.

For a school as big as the University of Texas, the alumni and fan base is definitely of of the biggest in the nation. There are Texas alumni in any corner of the country. Back in 2000, when Texas played Stanford in Palo Alto, there were more Texas fans showed up in their burnt orange outfit than the Stanford fans in their red. On top of that, Texas is called football country for a reason. They are crazy about football. Even people who have never attended the university are rooting for the Horns.

So this Rose Bowl national championship game is indeed a dream come true for many people. Of course, winning it will bring the joy of a lifetime to the fans, well, at least the joy of the last the last 35 years. So when people say the pressure is on USC to win this national championship as the favorite and as a record breaker, I turn the table around and and say that the pressure on Texas is as big as the size of Texas. 12.31.05