When did this happen?

I was excited today to tune in to the first televised A&M football game of the season. Ready to see that kick-off and hear 80,000 people yelling "Gig 'Em Aggies!" Anticipating a good year for the Aggies. (Hopefully. Finally.) However, I was shocked when they showed the first full shot of the student side of Kyle Field. The old metal letters spelling out "Welcome to Aggieland" and "Home of the 12th Man":

have been replaced with I don't know what on the third deck and a stadium-long screen with flashing words and pictures on the second deck:

Now I realize that many stadiums around the country have installed these, but at A&M, a school of tradition, is this really necessary? I like how Kyle Field has looked the same for so long (other than the additions of The Zone and that huge frikkin' scoreboard at the other end) and the sound of people beating on those metal letters during games was a part of being there.

Am I overreacting, being ridiculous, or do you agree with me? I'd like to hear other Aggies' opinions.

Posted in: on Saturday, September 08, 2007 at at 4:55 PM    

2 comments:

1. TeamThomson On September 08, 2007 9:27 PM Wrote

   VERY DISSAPOINTING!!! They always say "change is good", well NOT in aggieland!!!

   
2. jenna On September 15, 2007 10:53 PM Wrote

   Okay, here's the scoop. (Kevin and I went to the game tonight.) The "Home of the 12th Man" on the 3rd deck is still the metal letters, just with a fancy new background and scoreboards at either end. (I imagine the concrete wasn't too pretty to look at anymore, with all the bird poop, remember?) Besides, students still bang on the metal letters.
   
   On the 2nd deck is a new ribbon board they added last year. There's another one on the 2nd deck on the pressbox side. "Welcome to Aggieland" is now on the 3rd deck of the pressbox side, still metal letters.
   
   One thing we noticed tonight that's different is that they hardly do any yells anymore... instead, there's a lot of media stuff going on at the jumbo-tron (aka "that huge frikkin' scoreboard at the other end"). I'm sure they have to coordinate when the jumbo-tron runs and when they can yell. And, this game wasn't on tv so there wasn't a huge amount of time between plays like normal.
   
   Overall, we really enjoyed the game. They have a flyover for every home game now, and tonight was the Apache helicopters. They flew over twice, actually, once before the game and again during the 4th quarter.
   
   You should come down for a game and overreact for yourself! :) Jon would love it.

   

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