Where: Dallas, Texas (and environs)
When: fall
If you like: sports and the outdoors
Why you should go: In a 2000 obituary for a certain iconically fedora-ed football coach from Texas, the Los Angeles Times noted that the state is a place “where football and religion are frequently confused.” But it’s not just reverence that the sport inspires. “For so many different communities across the state of Texas, football is a sense of identity,” says Greg Tepper, longtime managing editor of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine (oft-cited, kid you not, as the “Bible to Texas football fans”). “It is about the football, yes—we take it extremely seriously—but it’s also about the band, and it’s about the drill team, and it’s about the cheerleaders, and it’s about the people who are selling the concessions, and it’s the pageantry that goes around it.”
Come late summer, that pageantry is in full swing many days and nights of the week, but for an epic Texas football experience, might we direct your attention to the weekend of October 10, in the hotbed of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. On Friday, with clear eyes, full hearts, and the spirit of Coach and Tami Taylor in your soul, you can take in a game at any number of powerhouse high school programs in the area—Highland Park, Southlake Carroll, Allen, Prosper, Duncanville, McKinney, or last season’s 6A Division 1 champs, North Crowley, to name but a few. On Saturday, make plans to attend the Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl, the annual matchup between Texas and Oklahoma. (The Longhorns and Sooners might be SEC newbies, but their duel for regional supremacy has waged for well over a century and, this year, might just feature a Manning behind center.) And on Sunday, head for AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the hallowed home of the Dallas Cowboys. Yes, the product that “America’s Team” has been putting on the field of late might not be, ahem, as lustrous as when that aforementioned coach was at the helm, but the facility is a sight to behold. And easily can be: The stadium offers up a collection of tours, giving fans a peek at NFL-level pageantry.
G&G tip: A ticket to the Red River Rivalry will also give you entrée to the State Fair of Texas, unfolding on the same fairgrounds the Cotton Bowl calls home. You’d be remiss to not pit-stop for a Fletcher’s Original Corny Dog—or two.
