My brother and I have two annual North Texas traditions. One is our yearly trip to the SBC Basketball Tournament, and the other is our road trip to at least one out-of-conference football game.

Our football trips started back in 2005, with a trip to Manhattan, Kansas. My brother wanted to see a game in a BCS school environment. We usually go with a barely spoken optimism, but never truly expecting to see a victory. Which is good, because other than the 2007 loss to SMU, every OOC game we’ve seen in person has been a beatdown by 5 touchdowns or more.

Our dream of seeing an upset fades a little more with every year that passes, but we keep traveling. It gives us an excuse to spend a weekend hanging out, long after the point in adulthood that such trips generally become prohibitively difficult to schedule. It lets us see games in a big-time environment. It allows us explore exotic college towns, both good and bad.

And sometimes, it provides my brother the opportunity to eat at Shoney’s.

For those unfamiliar, Shoney’s is basically a Denny’s or IHOP, but with a mini-Golden Corral buffet dropped in the middle of the floor like a holy shrine for worshipping starch. To give a little more perspective- My first job was as a busboy in an upscale French restaurant in suburban Atlanta. The hostess had a term for people who would bring their children along, get upset that we didn’t have a kid’s menu, and leave their table looking like a post-cyclone FEMA disaster area. She called them “Shoney’s Folk”.

Our waitress has been so beaten down by the Shoney’s ecosystem that she didn’t even bother giving us menus. She just sighed and said to help ourselves to the buffet, which was what everyone else in the place seemed to be doing. Little brother was delighted to grab a plate, but I held out and ordered a hamburger.

If you love your brother (or if you’re hungry for steam tray carbohydrates in mass quantities), Shoney’s has Texas locations in Brownsville, Houston, McAllen, and Windcrest. If you ask extra nicely, you can even order a prepared dish.

Shoney’s was a known quantity that I could deal with… But the Evil Unknown of concern to both of us was the condition of our hotel room.

Tuscaloosa does booming hotel/motel business on game weekends, with sky high rates and limited availability. We were forced to choose between a $90 (plus taxes and the requisite additional ‘fees’) Motel 6, the recipient of several scathing online reviews, or a $150+ Super 8 with poor-to-mediocre reviews.

Figuring that an extra $60 to maybe get a bad hotel rather than a terrible hotel was a waste of money, we rolled the dice and booked the Motel 6. Which, thanks to a very recent renovation, wasn’t just surprisingly not awful… It was satisfyingly adequate!

The main worry was disgusting bedding, but the bedspreads and sheets looked practically brand new. The bedspreads also looked like a clipart collage of U-Haul trailer graphics. Pickup trucks, grizzly bears, canoes, waterfalls, all piled on top of each other with no apparent logical structure.

Ugly sheets I can deal with, so long as they’re clean. And the second biggest concern, the bathroom, was like a futuristic wonderland. The shower looked like a Star Trek transporter tube or a spray-tan booth.

So if you’re booking a trip to Tuscaloosa, don’t believe the negative hype. Whatever problems Motel 6 may have had in the past… They’ve got their business straight now. If you’re looking for a cheap, clean place to sleep, poop, and shower… Motel 6 of Tuscaloosa gets our seal of approval.

Also receiving our seal of approval? Dreamland BBQ. Not that the place needs our help generating good publicity… They came highly recommended by both locals and previous visitors. And it was most certainly delicious stuff; lived up to all that was promised and more.

Dreamland offers a white folks variation on chips and salsa: sliced white bread and a big dipping cup full of barbecue sauce. At first, it felt peculiar to eat plain bread soggy with sauce; but any reservations we had disappeared immediately. Because that stuff was crazy delicious. Between the two of us, we probably consumed half a loaf of Wonder Bread.

I’m not a fan of meat on a bone, but the ribs were a highly recommended signature dish. So I was happy to see a “Rib Sandwich” on the menu, figuring it must be a boneless meat alternative… Something like a pulled pork or pulled chicken sandwich. Instead, I got a plate with four rib bones. No bread on either side.

I don’t mean to be a jerk about it, but Alabama can’t be much of a school for book learnin’ if the people there don’t understand the definition of a word as simple as “sandwich”.

Was it delicious? Yes, but that’s beside the point- Words mean things, Alabama. If you forsake him, that means the Earl of Sandwich died in vain for your etymological sins.

Alabama Tailgaters apparently like doing it in the BUTT together.

Tuscaloosa seems like a smaller and more rural version of Mobile; a scenic college town with a lot of aesthetic appeal. Unfortunately, because of constant rain that only let up for 4 hours (during the game and briefly before/after), most of our sightseeing took place from inside our car or during our lengthy walks between the off site parking lot and the stadium.

Still, we got to see some fancy campus scenery, both of Tuscaloosa’s main stretches of bars and restaurants, a lot of pre-game band activity, and, right outside the stadium, something that made us feel like we’d never left Texas:

Everybody loves Tom Landry!

Alabama fans appear to be VERY fond of Tom Landry. Why fans of a college team have such reverence for a guy who only coached in the NFL, I have no idea. I chalk it up to local peculiarity. They’re obsessed with bears, too. Probably because of a recent influx of black bears coming over from Georgia.

Having spent some time growing up in Georgia, I can understand their bear obsession. I vaguely recall hearing folks around our old town talking about how it would be bad for their neighborhoods if black bears started showing up in the area. I don’t know much about zoology, but I guess it makes sense that wild bears would be bad for property values.

Good luck, Alabama. If I’ve learned anything from watching The Simpsons… Dealing with a country bear jamboroo can be a very expensive proposition.

Let the bears pay the Bear Tax! We paid the Hotel/Motel Tax!

Now feels like a good time to mention that the Crimson Tide fans were by far the most gracious, friendly, and welcoming hosts we’ve ever experienced. All day long, people were randomly walking up to greet us and ask to make sure “everyone treated (us) right”.

Every other road game we’ve ever gone to, no matter what opponent and no matter what sport, we’ve run into at least one or two jackasses. Sometimes alcohol is obviously a contributing factor, but sometimes they’re just natural jerks. We’d never made a trip where we someone didn’t get in our faces, taunt us from near or far, or try to pick a fight with one or both of us.

This was the exception. Every single person we encountered was fantastic. Older alums, half-drunk frat guys, band members… Everyone was amazing. I can’t say enough about the courtesy and manners of the Alabama fans in attendance and the people of Tuscaloosa.

Not to be overly pessimistic, but with 3 losses already on our record, North Texas will probably have a hard time receiving an invitation to the BCS Championship Game this year. With Alabama looking like a stronger contender (at the moment), I’ll be rooting for the Crimson Tide, just because of how well their fans treated us.

Having sincerely praised these fine people, I think I can safely make a cheap and easy joke inspired by their spirit shop signage:

Good news for fatties!

For anyone seeking branded merchandise tailored towards the hefty set, all you need to do is Roll, your fat Tide ass, Roll! a few blocks past the stadium to this store.

On the subject of branded merchandise- I thought at first that the stadium and surrounding areas were flooded with Crimson Tide bluetooth douches…

…But eventually found out that these things are pre-programmed, portable radios that MANY fans use to listen to the radio broadcast while at the game. Apparently, there are several teams with logo earpieces… But I’ve been to games at a few of those schools, and I’ve never seen these things all over the place like they were in Tuscaloosa.

Alabama also adheres to the common SEC tradition of blazers and ties for the fraternity guys, sundresses for the sorority girls. I’m a fan of student formalwear at games. Though, at our home games, I’d be satisfied if students (and alums, and random guests who apparently love Southern California) would just quit wearing apparel from other colleges and universities.

“Just so you know, Coach- If you somehow manage to keep it close, we’re going to screw you so hard with bad calls, the torsion will make your head pop off. Welcome to the SEC.”

The game… Well, it’s never fun to lose by 46 points. But at least we got to experience the Alabama tradition of serenading a beaten opponent. It’s like “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk“, but with more words:

One last note… This was our first road trip alone together with a GPS system. And the “estimated arrival” feature is an invitation to daredevilry. The temptation to make better time, constantly encouraged through real-time estimated arrival time updates, pushed us to borderline psychotic driving behaviors.

We left home in Dallas with an estimated arrival time of 7:45 p.m. We stopped for lunch at a sit-down restaurant, stopped twice for gas, drove through at least half a dozen rainstorms, including one so intense that near-zero visibility forced us to spend half an hour driving 45 mph with the hazard lights on. And we still made it to Tuscaloosa by 7:20 p.m. There’s no sane and safe explanation for that.

I blame the bad influence of GPS. When we leave for Lafayette this weekend, I’m printing a map and we’ll travel the way the pioneers intended… With a turn-by-turn Google Map that only gives us a general travel duration, not a specific arrival time.

It’ll be like Oregon Trail, only without all the cholera and river fording.