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For your average Longhorn football fan, the first game day is just that. One day. The crowds fill the stands, they watch the teams play and a few hours later, they leave. Ronnie Johns is a football fan too, but to him, the upcoming match against the University of North Texas is the culmination of weeks of manual labor, sweat and late nights.
After 35 years, Johns retired in 2003, but he just can't get away. He's back this semester as part-time grounds crew help for the football season.
"I'm going to stick around until they won't take me back anymore," he said, calling the football stadium his home and the team of workers there his family. One of the workers literally is his family - his identical twin brother, Donnie Johns. Both brothers said sharing in the camaraderie is a big incentive to stay at the stadium for such a long time.
The Johns brothers are only two of the 15 members responsible for upkeep of the stadium, but there are hundreds of others working behind the scenes to get everything ready for the first game of the season.
Like Brook Whitaker, who supervises athletic facilities, equipment and maintenance at the stadium. He's taken care of the playing grounds for nine years.
It's not just any playing grounds, mind you. The grass is valued at $20,000, Whitaker said. Called TifSport Certified Bermudagrass, it's specifically designed for sports fields and parks in warm parts of the country.
Whitaker tends the grass all year, not only mowing the field, but spraying pesticide, applying fertilizer, and rolling and vacuuming the special grasses. The roller smooths out the field after a game or practice, he said, because Bermudagrass is grown on sand and easily shifts. Vacuuming the grounds after practice picks up blades of grass that have been uprooted. Although Whitaker lovingly tends the field, he said he rarely gardens at home, just like his co-worker Scott Dossat, the stadium's former facility manager.
Few people are allowed to set foot on the sacred playing grounds. Whitaker said he lives by the grass-keeper's proverb: "Grass is grown by the man, and it is killed by the foot." The Longhorn Marching Band is usually only allowed to run through their show once on the field before the season starts, but they were given two chances this year because time ran out during the first rehearsal.
"600 feet can do a lot of damage on this kind of grass - they compact it," Whitaker said, resignedly pointing out that the band's damage to the field is visible even to the untrained eye.
And that's why shoes were neatly lined by the stands and 730 feet danced on the hot black asphalt as the band entered the stadium last Wednesday.
"The grass is ridiculously expensive, so the turf guys don't allow us to wear shoes on the field," said Jennifer Epstein, a kinesiology senior and Longhorn trumpet player.
Not only does Whitaker have green fingers, but he's also an artist, painting the field from goal to goal. About 300 gallons of white paint, 150 gallons of orange paint and at least two paint jobs ensure brilliant colors and a good television glow, he said. And the aftermath? Whitaker painstakingly hand-paints over any game-day damage.
On game day, Whitaker, Johns and many other workers arrive anywhere from five-to-eight hours ahead of time to take care of any last minute logistical problems and to attend to the mundane: putting up pennants and flags, directing the press and opening gates. For the first game of the season, everything has to be just right, said Larry Falk, director of operations and facilities for Men's Athletics.
"When you've got 80,000 of your closest friends coming over, you want your house to look good," Falk said. And the stadium might as well be his house. Falk started working as a student football manager in 1981 and gradually ascended the ranks to become the director of facilities and operations in 1991, the title he holds today. Despite the many years he's spent in the stadium, he said the magic of football season has never quite worn off.
"It's so amazing how [the stadium] can be completely empty all the time, but is completely filled with people one hour before game time," he mused. "Then it's empty again. It makes you wonder where the 80,000 people come from and where they go."
The workers themselves are part of the huge influx of people. Close to 3,000 workers, event staff and football players are at any given home game. From security guards to concession stand workers, they're all making sure the game runs smoothly.
Despite the perks to working at the stadium, for Reyes and others like him, it still is work. They are on call the entire game but are free to watch if there are no problems, said Falk, the operations director.
Mostly the workers just roam the stadium and watch the game, going unnoticed in their non-descript uniforms. And that's the way they like it.
"If people notice us, something went wrong," said David Seaton, grounds maintenance leader.
But for all the attention these workers don't receive, there's plenty of others enraptured by getting it. For groups like the Longhorn Marching Band and the Orange and White Cheer Squads, that's their job: getting noticed and revving up the crowd. And they love every minute of it. Laura Binggeli heads the Orange Cheer Squad. and her favorite part of a game is the moment when she runs out from the dark into a lighted stadium filled with 80,000 screaming fans gone wild.
"I just get chills," she said.
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