AUSTIN, Texas — There’s a conspiracy theory going around here among Georgia football fans. Some Bulldogs seem to believe that the University of Texas and city of Austin concocted a plan to hold a major Formula One Grand Prix race the same weekend as their beloved Texas Longhorns were hosting the college football program with the most wins the past three years just to drive up travel costs and make it difficult for UGA to create one of their infamous Dawg Nation invasions.
While the perfect storm of major weekend entertainment has, in fact, driven up prices, traffic and possibly kept quite a few of the Bulldogs faithful at home, the Texas brain trust insists it can’t take credit.
“I know that the University of Texas gets accused of a lot of things,” said Drew Martin, the Longhorns’ executive senior associate athletic director for external affairs, “but telling the Southeastern Conference how to schedule its conference football games is not something we do.”
The truth is, they’ve been holding Formula One races at the Circuit of the Americas track since the facility opened in 2012. What’s rare is having a top-five college football matchup the same weekend.
Last year, when the U.S. Grand Prix was held at COTA, the Longhorns were playing an out-of-town game at Houston. This year, not only is Texas playing at home, but it happens to be hosting an opponent that hasn’t played in Austin for 66 years.
As it is wont to do, that has created another massive influx of Georgia fans. On Friday especially, fans were heard “calling the Dawgs” in airports not only in Austin, but in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio as well. On Friday night, Austin’s famous Sixth Street entertainment district was crawling with Bulldogs.
How many Georgia fans actually made the trip? Hard to tell. Martin said the Bulldogs immediately snapped up their 5,000 visitor-allotted tickets. But thousands more have been procured on the secondary market.
Atlanta’s Bryce Holcomb said he bought his three lower-level tickets on SeatGeek.com for $1,300 apiece.
Capacity for Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is listed as 100,119. But the record attendance at the 100-year-old facility is 105,213, which was set when Alabama played here Sept. 10, 2022.
Martin believes that record could be broken at this game.
“We’re expecting an absolute full crowd,” he said. “We know it’s going to be a minimum of 101,000. But between standing-room only, using every nook and cranny and all the additional passes and workers and all that, I’d imagine you’ll have close to 105,000 in here on Saturday night.”
Located 16.8 miles to the south, COTA is expecting a capacity crowd of 120,000 for the main event Sunday. But there has been activity there all week, including Friday and Saturday for qualifying. Outside of the track is COTA RV park, where people have been camping all week, and a 14,000-seat amphitheater, where concerts are conducted every night.
“You see it in the traffic,” Ken Leonard, owner of Mozart’s Coffee Roasters, told CBS Austin. “I-35 and Mopac are packed both ways.”
Local businesses are taking advantage. Leonard’s business had 35 exotic cars parked out front, including McLaren, Lamborghini, and Maserati as well as some F1 race cars.
The Longhorns have been preparing for this storm of humanity for months.
“This game was circled on everybody’s calendar; it was on ESPN/ABC’s calendar, for sure,” Martin said. “Then you layer on top of it with F1 U.S. Grand Prix? I mean, I don’t know of another sporting center in the world that’s happened like this. You’re talking about a major, international sporting event that brings in thousands and thousands of people from all over the world and marry it with the premier American college football game in the country on the same weekend. That’s exciting.”
Though they’re radically different sports, there’s more crossover than one might expect. Responding to an AJC social-media query, several Georgia fans said they were attending Saturday night’s game and staying over for Sunday’s Grand Prix race.
Dell Technologies is a primary sponsor for the University of Texas and also sponsors the McLaren Racing Team. Several of its drivers, including star Oscar Jack Piastri, toured DKR earlier this week.
Credit: Chip Towers
Credit: Chip Towers
As for the football game, Georgia fans were encouraged to get to the stadium early. While they won’t be able to go inside until two hours before kickoff, the Longhorns have arranged tons of entertainment outside of it.
At midnight Friday, Texas closed San Jacinto Boulevard, which borders the south side of DKR-Texas Memorial, and turned it into what they call “Bevo Boulevard.”
That entire area is turned into a street festival, with food trucks, stands selling 16-ounce beers for $5-6, music venues – the rock band Spoon is headlining Saturday – and TV screens everywhere showing other college football games.
“Being in a metropolitan area like downtown Austin, we’re not blessed with the acreage of some of our land-grant institution friends that have tons and tons of space and park cars on lawns and do massive tailgates,” Martin said. “So, we have very unique festivities outside the stadium, which include a giant street festival with games and prizes and things of that nature.”
The tough part comes on the other side of the game and the race. Surrounding airports are expected to be glutted Sunday night and Monday morning. Local officials are encouraging travelers to get there at least two hours early.
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