Alabama’s band not traveling to Texas resurrects dumb controversy

Any fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide wanting an excuse to be #madonline found the perfect excuse on Tuesday when the school confirmed that the Alabama marching band will not be present at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday for the highly-anticipated matchup against the Texas Longhorns.

“Due to the seating location and configuration of the visiting institution’s ticket allotment at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, the Million Dollar Band will not make the trip this weekend for the Alabama at Texas football game,” the school confirmed in a statement.

The news reignites one of the dumbest controversies in recent Texas football history — in 2018, college football Twitter railed against the Longhorns for locating the Horned Frogs marching band in the upper deck.

Visiting tickets, including the band, were formerly in the lower bowl of the stadium, but incoming athletics director Chris Del Conte decided to move those tickets into the upper deck to provide a contiguous student section in the lower bowl. Moreover, the Texas administration made the decision that if opposing teams want to bring their band, those seats come out of their allotment of 5,000 tickets.

In the contract signed between the two schools for the home-and-home series that continues next year in Tuscaloosa, Alabama agreed that “the Visiting Institution band seats, if needed, must come from the Visiting Institution’s ticket allotment.”