Late Lunch Special: The Semifinals filled with Blue Bloods are a purist's dream come true

Here are a few scattershot thoughts while I wait for my dad at lunch at an Austin institution steeped in Longhorn lore.

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For the second week in a row, I’m dining at El Patio the day before a Texas game. There’s great juju in here, and I am superstitious. I repeat patterns that my mind links to Longhorn victories and avoid things I did before losses. Though I didn’t always enjoy the process in the Peach Bowl against ASU, I will take the addition to the win column by any means necessary. Especially tomorrow night against a heavily favored Ohio State. Whatever it takes to win. I’m happy to do my part, even if it means retracing my steps so that the Football Gods are pleased.

There are James Street, Ricky Williams, and Earl Campbell pictures on the walls of this old haunt. Though there’s sideways freezing rain outside, you come into this place, and it’s like you can feel Darrell Royal, Tom Campbell Sr., Emory Bellard, and Spike Dykes meeting here after a hot summer practice. The saltine crackers with the salsa are gone, but the history looms large. It’s a reminder that being a fan of a team like Texas has strong connective tissue to generations past.

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Helmets

The playoff has been a mixed bag of results for sure. Seeding, ticketing, and game locations absolutely need to be cleaned up if this thing is going to be lauded long-term. But one thing you can’t argue with is the final four has produced a dream matchup for helmet gazers. Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Penn State. Four of the most iconic six or seven helmets in college football. It’s a dream for those of us who are prone to extreme bouts of nostalgia. All of them make you or me feel something when we see them.

For Penn State, the harsh area of the country the Nittany Lions hail from might not inspire many warm and fuzzy feelings for the optimistic Texan. But the uniforms and white helmets with the blue stripe are beautifully simplistic. You know exactly what team you’re looking at when they take the field. I remember seeing the white helmets for the first time when I was seven. We watched the Longhorns turn into a pumpkin in the 1997 Fiesta Bowl against Joe Paterno’s squad. Texas’ appearance in the bowl was icing on the cake after their monumental upset of Nebraska in the Big 12 Championship, but the 38-15 loss signaled John Mackovic’s good days at Texas were finished.

For Notre Dame, it’s probably the first college football helmet I could name other than Texas and Texas Tech (family ties). I watched Rudy so often on VHS that I knew it line by line. The script and the walk-on’s story being bogus didn’t matter to a kid. The glistening gold of the Notre Dame helmet is synonymous with college football. It inspires something, either reverence, possibly awe, or disgust. My mother still hasn’t forgiven the Irish for 1978. If Texas were to beat the Buckeyes and face the Fighting Irish in the National Championship, it would be an all-time matchup for blue blood aficionados, but a strange coincidence. Texas was falsely declared “back” by beating a terrible Brian Kelly-led Irish squad in the 2016 opener. If the Longhorns could complete their journey back to prominence with a trophy held high over the Golden Domers, it would be ironic, poetic, all of the above.

The Buckeyes helmet is the opposite of the rest of the four. The littering of the Ohio State plant undoes any claim at simplicity. It arguably has way too much going on for it to be gorgeous like the other blue bloods. For many, myself included, it inspires hate. Just like the Oklahoma and Texas A&M helmets do. While Texas and Michigan have always seemed like weird soul siblings—blue bloods prone to periods of malaise—Oklahoma and Ohio State are linked, angrier blue bloods that have never had long periods of drought. Oklahoma university president George Cross’ 1951 infamous words of “We want to build a university our football team can be proud of” can apply to how Ohio State conducts affairs as well. Their football team is Ohio State’s identity.

It’s harder for me to speak about the meaning of the Longhorn helmet because it’s been ubiquitous with my life, growing up in Austin and attending school here. But it obviously meant something to Steve Sarkisian. He spoke about it repeatedly when he took the job in 2021. He realized he was standing on Holy Ground when he took the job that January. It’s clear he’s always had reverence for this job, this team. He’s had it ever since he first saw the helmets when he was a kid. Because for anyone who cares about this sport, the burnt orange logo emblazoned on the white helmet is iconic. It stands out. It’s unmistakable.

And it’s not without purpose. In the 1960s, before all games were accessible on TV, a team was allowed a maximum of three televised games per season. Darrell Royal, being a marketing genius ahead of his time, wanted a logo that would stand out on color televisions. Royal tasked Rooster Andrews with the creation of an iconic logo. Andrews drew it in crayon, and Royal immediately knew it fit his “less is more” ethos when it comes to branding. The signature helmet sticker and the feelings of love and hate it inspires have roots back to that moment.

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Whatever these four helmets make you feel—love or hate—the semis are a college football purist’s dream come true.