Houston Texans NFL Team

This past weekend my Oakland Raiders lost to the Houston Texans football team. Tickets for the game were only $65 dollars apiece. NRG Stadium is huge so any seat you buy will have a great view.

One thing to note is that stadium parking tickets must be purchased prior through Ticketmaster ($40). They do not sell tickets at the gate so that delayed us from entering early.

In addition, the gates for parking/tailgating opened four hours prior to kickoff. In the West Coast, gates open five hours which made it less fun. There were no street vendors walking around selling merchandise either, so we didn’t get the chance to buy anything in the parking lot. There’s a bunch of hotels around the stadium and it’s a 10-minute walk from any direction walking into NRG. Our group had a hotel at the Holiday Inn.

The tailgating experience wasn’t that great because I didn’t feel the energy like being back in Oakland. People were parked far from each other and left huge spaces between cars. I did locate a huge section of Raider fans all grouped up, at what looked like a mini Raiderville so that was nice. Raider fans travel well and continue to play Mexican Banda music loudly. Somewhere in that sea of darkness I smelt marijuana loudly and clearly.

Texan’s fans aren’t rowdy, so they didn’t heckle me much while I wore my Raiders gear. However, get ready for the chants of “We Are Texans”. They were doing that the whole game, so the fans chimed in. That was a bit annoying.

One cool thing about NRG is that they have live bands performing music throughout the concourse. They also had a marching band so I got to enjoy that while walking around.

The drive into Houston, TX from Austin was just under three hours. Gas was only $1.91 a gallon, so you can’t beat that.