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| Billy, George, Richard, Jay O'Neal, Gilbert Garza and me in a road trip to conference tournament |
Due to geographic location, Lamar usually ended up playing at the Regional tournament in Austin. This is not a friendly place to play as Texas usually draws the big crowd and usually got the "home cooking" from the umpires.
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| George Fortune |
In 2002 our foursome had made the trip to Austin where we won one game and were eliminated
10-9 by Baylor in the semifinals. This set up the championship game between Baylor and Texas the next day. The temperature was hovering around the 100 mark. Since we had bought tickets to the entire tournament and had paid for the rooms for one more night, we planned to attend the championship game. As we were hanging outside the sold out stadium prior to the game. Billy and George informed Richard and me they had sold their tickets to the game. Richard and I wanted to see the game and discussed what we would do. We all drove together and we decided if we could sell our tickets for a profit, we would would leave. Some people call this "scalping", I prefer to call it Keynesian Economics. As I stood around the crowd holding up the tickets, people would approach and ask, "How much?" I wasn't going to give them away and the price was too high for the the first UT fans that asked.
After a few minutes I was approached by a guy in shorts. Immediately I knew he wasn't interested in attending the game when he showed me his badge. He said, that it was against the law to sell tickets on university property, and he really didn't want to take me to jail. Since I didn't want to go to jail, I gathered up Richard and we told Billy and George we were going to watch the game. They would have to stay outside and wait until it was over before we could head back home.
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| Richard Placette |
That was only part of the story. Richard and I found our seats while our traveling buddies were left outside. About the second inning, I look down the stands and George is walking up. It turned out they had run into one of Lamar's coaches' family and were given one ticket to the game and one to the VIP tent which had air conditioning and closed circuit TV of the game. A little later Billy got a ticket from someone and he came up.
Not only did they sell their tickets to the final game, but they got in the game free anyway.
At least I didn't go to jail.
Texas won.
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| Billy Waugh |
