Sunday was a hot day. My nose was itchy, peeling, and burnt. Five minutes earlier, the stadium had been packed tightly with red, white, and burnt orange. With less than a minute left, amid the stomping and “OU sucks!” chants, the standing spectators began to move.

As they left the stadium, the fair became a throng, a herd unable to plan a proper exit strategy. We stood in the heat, sandwiched between frat boys and four-wheel strollers. No one could move, except for a man in a wheelchair who whizzed past the swarm. We got behind him, forming a single-file line. “Smart thinking!” someone yelled. The smell of sweat mixed with cheep beer invaded the tiny spaces between us.

In was bad enough, but outside the stadium was worse. It took thirty minutes to push to the exit, only to find a long line of children, Sooners, Austin sorority girls, and families, an interminable amount of people in front of us. There were so many who planned to take the DART – probably 1,000 people – that there was a line to get onto the platform of the station.

We asked a cop about alternatives. There was the forty-dollar-cab. There was waiting out the crowd, but that meant enduring the festering atmosphere of the fair again. The cop suggested taking the train the opposite way first, so we could double back and beat the crowd…maybe even get a coveted seat on the train.

We weren’t the only ones. Disgruntled passengers with the same brilliant idea were complaining about the influx of e-mails that the DART was going to receive. Phrases like “inefficient,” “can’t handle crowds,” and “two hours to get to Parker Road!” mingled around me.

We hopped on the train to MLK Station, and then headed back to Fair Park station. We got a seat, and five minutes of breathable air before the stampede of people running to the train, hoping, pushing, and shoving to get on this one. The stampede was followed by a standstill, by the languishing stink of a long day at the game, of fried foot long corn dogs and fake cheese nachos. Mockingbird Station was the next stop and we stood in anticipation of our imminent liberation. We just had to jostle through, trek through the heap of cars at the Park’N’Ride, and call it a great day at the TX-OU game.