This post is inspired by the inimitable Chuck Klosterman, who, on the recently launched sports and pop culture site Grantland.com, told the story of the greatest sporting event he has witnessed in person. The most endearing quality of the piece is that it is a game that, if it were not recounted by Klosterman, would be entirely forgotten. And while my story does not involve an undersized Native American basketball team holding off a superior junior college team with only three players, it is a story that needs to be told. The world must know what happened in Austin, Texas in 2004 when the ice hockey teams of The University of Texas and Texas A&M University faced off.
[Finding scores and recaps from the 2003-2004 hockey season is about like finding information on my 2nd grade tee ball team, so from here on out I'm relying on my own faulty memory. (I thought I got close for a minute, but then I realized I happened upon the intercollegiate roller hockey league, which of course has records dating back to the beginning of time.) Edit--I was able to find scores from A&M's 03-04 hockey season.]
I started business school at Texas in the fall of 2003, and I happened to have two classmates who played on Texas's club hockey team. The team played Baylor at the spacious Travis County Expo Center, home of the now-defunct Austin Ice Bats, and won 12-2. A Texas hockey fan described the collegiate hockey scene as follows: "Texas is winning 12-2 today, but when they go and play Oklahoma, they lose 12-2. And Oklahoma would lose 12-2 to a team like Michigan." Texas A&M, it was explained, was more on the level of Baylor than of Texas. (Looking at recent results, there is now almost complete parity among Texas hockey programs.)
Texas defeated A&M twice during the regular season by a combined score of 11-1, and the two teams met again in the playoffs at Austin's Chaparral Ice, a place where you might host your child's birthday party if you weren't fast enough to book Chuck E. Cheese. The match was witnessed by 50 or so people.
The game started predictably enough, as Texas secured a two-goal lead behind a superior front line that completely outmaneuvered the Aggies' defense. Early in the second period, Texas had a 4-1 advantage. The game seemed over, save for one fact: what the Aggies lacked in talent, experience, size, speed, quickness, and strategy, they made up for with grit, determination, pluck, moxie, and overall "underdogness." A&M closed the second period with two goals to bring the score to 4-3. Seven years later, it's difficult to find the words to describe how they managed to push the puck through the net twice so quickly. There's something about hockey and its (ideally) fluid motion that accentuates the differences between competitors of varying talent levels. Also, Texas kept running out fresh bodies, while A&M had fewer players on their bench, most of whom just sat there, conspicuously. I would have expected this difference in manpower to have borne fruit for the Longhorns by the end of the second, but instead A&M took a few chances on defense and, with the help of a well-placed shot and a fortuitous rebound, found themselves in a game at the beginning of the third period.
The final period began with great hope for both Aggie fans in attendance. And the goal that Texas scored toward the start of the third did not immediately seem to be an impediment to a comeback. But then it happened. The team that had, up to this point, directed all of their focus and energy toward the task at hand directed it toward the opposing team. I don't think the Aggies went two minutes the rest of the game without committing a penalty. Not content to commit garden variety fouls, they elevated loss of composure to an art form. The smallest amount of contact would have them trying to take the heads off their opponents. A player who lost the puck on a breakaway decided, rather than going after the puck or getting back on defense, to plow, full speed, into the goalie. He was among several players ejected.
With the A&M squad decimated from disqualifications, I thought they had made a mockery of what was, just a few minutes earlier, quite a compelling game. But then I saw the players coming off the Aggie bench, and I realized why they had sat for the entire game. You see, in fielding a roster of about 15 players, Texas A&M had managed to pick up about 10 who could actually skate. The crown jewel of the Aggie bench was a 6'5", 300-pound behemoth who was the last man off the bench. The only thing shakier than him on skates was the skates underneath him. He was so unsure of himself on skates that obviously were not intended for someone of his size that you started to wonder how he intended to skate at all, until you realized that he had no intention of skating. His first move was to collide immediately with the nearest Longhorn (in fairness, he may have just been looking for the closest object to cushion his inevitable fall). All that remains of this game, the final score (10-3), leaves no indication of how close it nearly was and how crazy it got.
The hockey game unfolded like a three-act play, with each act offering something entirely different. Aggie fans saw a tragedy, and Longhorn fans saw a comedy. I'm not sure what I saw. I've been to plenty of meaningful, suspenseful, and entertaining games, but this was the only game that I feel broke the rules of athletic competition. It was two periods of a great hockey game and one period of pure train wreck. Part of what makes the craziness of this game so interesting, though, is that it was authentic. Seeing how Aggies and Longhorns treat each other when nobody's watching, it turns out, makes for very compelling viewing.
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