Red River Showdown: UT fan attended rivalry game past 50 years

The pageantry of college football shines brightest in its storied rivalries.

You’ve got Michigan-Ohio State. You’ve got Bama-Auburn. Army-Navy. You can go on and on. 

Then, you’ve got the Red River Showdown: Texas-OU or OU-Texas (we’ll leave that up for debate).

Former Texas head coach Tom Herman once playfully illustrated the intensity of the rivalry with an experience he had: being flipped the “double bird” by both an elderly woman and little boy.

Both storied programs are backed by die-hard fans (clearly). Fans who have rooted for the burnt orange or crimson since their adolescent days. Fans like Phil Krauter, who has attended the Red River Showdown every single season for the past 50 years. 

He, like many others, have been following since he was just a boy (minus the double bird). 

Krauter grew up in West Texas and became a Longhorns fan by osmosis, he told WFAA.

“My dad was a Texas fan even though he did not go to school there,” Krauter said. “I remember seeing my first game on TV … Texas played LSU in the Cotton Bowl in 1963. I was only 7 years old and the Longhorn on the helmet … I was fascinated by it.”

Krauter eloquently recalled how Texas defeated Navy and future Dallas Cowboys star quarterback Roger Staubach the next year in the 1964 Cotton Bowl Classic, a de facto national championship.

It was fair to say Krauter was “hooked” ever since. He said Texas was the only place he ever wanted to go to school growing up.

“That’s the one place I submitted my SAT scores, so I guess if I hadn’t got in there, I don’t know what I would have done,” Krauter joked.

Krauter enrolled at Texas in 1973, which was the first year he went to the Red River Showdown game in-person, and thus the 50-year streak started.

Krauter began his Red River Showdown viewing experience in a rough patch for the Longhorns. 

Going to his first ever Red River Showdown in 1973, Krauter said he wasn’t sure what to expect. 

“It was different than Austin or Lubbock because you had half the stadium was crimson and half the stadium was burnt orange,” Krauter told WFAA. “The excitement and the cannons going off in the crowd, you know, half the crowd is roaring at all times. And I walked down there just dumbfounded and I said, ‘I can’t ever miss this game again.'”

The game was admirable to Krauter despite, in his words, “getting smacked” 52-13. OU dominated the rivalry in the early 1970s. The Sooners had already won two straight meetings before Krauter enrolled, and went on to claim three more games during his time as a UT student.

“They had hellacious teams with the Selmon brothers, their defenses were great,” Krauter said. “They were running the wishbone at that time also, and they were basically unstoppable.”

Two of the three Selmon brothers – Lee Roy and Dewey – would go on to be drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers No. 1 overall and in the second round in 1976, respectively.

Then, in Krauter’s first year after graduating, the Longhorns turned the tide.

Aside from Army-Navy (because of the pageantry of the game and supporting the military), Krauter said there is no other place to watch a football game than the Red River Showdown at the Cotton Bowl.

When asked about his most memorable moments of the rivalry, Krauter initially pointed to 1977. 

“Earl Campbell was a senior and obviously he went on to win the Heisman that year,” Krauter said. “In the the previous six years, we lost five and we tied the year before, and the reason we tied was because we blocked extra points at the end of the game.”

Texas held OU to two field goals in the game and Campbell scored the only touchdown of the game, leading UT to a 13-6 victory.

Next in the memory bank is the controversial game in 1984.

No. 1 Texas versus No. 2 Oklahoma, how could it get any bigger? Cue the rain.

“It rained the whole game … just poured,” Krauter said. “That game was memorable because it rained hard the whole game.”

OU fans would argue that’s not the only thing memorable about the game. In the waning moments of the game, Texas starting quarterback and future Westlake head coach Todd Dodge took a shot at the end zone, which was seemingly intercepted by the Sooners. 

Except, the refs called the player out of bounds.

“I’m not going to say the ref was wrong or right on that, but Switzer went berserk,” Krauter said. 

WFAA’s sister station, KVUE, spoke to Dodge about that game in 2019, where he claims it shouldn’t have mattered anyway because “it was a big-time pass interference before it ever happened.”

Semantics, OU fans would argue. Let’s chalk that one up to debate. 

UT kicked a game-tying field goal on the last play of the game, marking one of the five ties in the 100-plus-year-old rivalry. 

Over the years, Krauter has sat in numerous different spots in the Cotton Bowl, including close to the “Battle Line.”

“Yeah, I had a friend who got tickets for me several years and they were right there on the 50, basically. I’ve sat different places over the years too,” Krauter said.

Krauter said he likes to sit just close enough to verbally-joust with Sooners fans.

“I like to be close enough to talk trash. There’s no doubt about that,” Krauter said. “I like sitting in the upper deck. But there’s so much trash talk. I mean, when I was younger, it was a lot more serious. Now, they look at me as an old man, I guess. They’re a little bit nicer to me. But it’s all in good fun.”

Krauter told WFAA that his experience has been fairly tame. However, the old days were much more raucous than it is present day. 

“Quite frankly, is vicious as it is, I have never to my knowledge seen a fight or anything after around the stadium or after the game,” Krauter said. “Unlike back in the old days when they used to go downtown on Commerce Street, and I always woke up when I was a kid on Saturday morning to see how many people got arrested that night before.”

In 2018, WFAA reporter Chris Sadeghi profiled how downtown Dallas would prepare for a rowdy crowd, resulting in hundreds of arrests – mainly of Dallasites and not UT or OU students.

Krauter admits one of the greatest performances he’s ever seen in the rivalry was not done by a Longhorn. Instead, he points to Kyler Murray in 2018.

“We had that game under control. He’s went nuts in the fourth quarter,” Krauter said. “Probably one of the greatest performances that I’ve ever seen. We wound up winning the game, luckily, but he got them back in it.”

With 100-plus years of history, memorable moments and classic kickoffs will come a plenty. For a deeper dive at the history of the Red River Showdown, visit WFAA’s deep dive here.

Saturday’s game will mark the 118th Red River Showdown between the two illustrious programs.

And, like every year as he’s done for the past 50, Krauter will be there, attending to all of his traditions.

“Our tradition is, we’ll get out there and I have about five good friends we’ll go and meet at one certain concession stand near Big Tex, eat a corn dog, drink some beer and then we always meet after the game right to the left Big Tex because it’s by the food court,” Krauter said. “The beer is cheaper in the food court than anywhere on the State Fair grounds. Good place to be.”

As for the game? Krauter is feeling good about Texas’ shot to flip the script on the rivalry again, which has been owned by the Sooners recently. If history is any indication, however, it’ll be a close game. The last nine times Texas and Oklahoma have played each other have been decided by one possession. 

No lead is safe in the Red River Showdown, Krauter says.

“I don’t care how good one of the teams is, it’s always a dogfight,” Krauter said. “Just when you think you’re going to see a killing by one team, the other one will come back and win the game.”

Regardless of the outcome, Krauter will don the burnt orange and throw up a “hook ’em” horns, just as he did when he concluded his interview for this story.