Alabama band not traveling for Texas game due to road ticket allowance
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The University of Alabama's marching band will not be at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium for Saturday's game between the Longhorns and No. 1 Crimson Tide.
According to Alabama Athletics, the Million Dollar Band will not be traveling "due to the seating location and configuration of the visiting institution’s ticket allotment."
Visiting teams to Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium are given a certain amount of tickets for road games. Texas Athletics requires schools to use a portion of that allotment for its band.
This isn't a new deal at Longhorns home games.
Texas opted to move the visitors' section and the visiting band to the upper northeast corner of the stadium several years ago. Texas Athletics Director Chris Del Conte responded to a Twitter complaint about the seating setup in 2018.
"We moved the visitors section from the lower bowl to give our students a contiguous student section thus creating a fantastic atmosphere for in DKR.. if a visiting team elects to bring their band must sit in the seats allotted for visitors," Del Conte wrote in a tweet in 2018.
Seats are hard to come by for the first meeting between the two programs since the 2009 BCS National Championship game. This summer, StubHub announced the UT-Alabama game was the most in-demand game of the 2022 college football season.
FOX's Big Noon Kickoff crew and ESPN's College Gameday will be live in Austin Saturday morning ahead of the game.