Maybe this is addressed elsewhere, but I can't find anything indicating what is going to happen to bonfire going forward? Is it going to be moved to coincide with the LSU game or the Arkansas game or will it not happen anymore?

I stopped after, "Maybe this is addressed elsewhere".

It'll still get built. No one is killing it. Time table is already compressed enough so it can't be brought up the calendar. It will in all probability be just like always, sans the color of the outhouse.

I think I could do without the outhouse...

http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=2021029&forum_id=14

Maybe we should sticky that one.

Short answer, Bonfire didn't start with tu. It took anywhere from 12 to 20 years for Bonfire to become aligned with the tu game.

Even so, everybody (who built it) knows tu never had anything to do with the experience. I don't think I had a single conversation in the woods all year about tu (or any year, now that I think about it). Or, for that matter, the SEC or "what are we going to do?" See you in 2012, that's what. Build the Hell.

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Short answer, Bonfire didn't start with tu.

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Thank you.


This is what I've said all along. People roll their eyes when I go into as much of the history as I know, but this is the truth.

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OCHWFLAKASSOBRTTEFE

People roll their eyes because a woman is talking

I never realized bonfire didn't start with tu. Interesting fact. Thanks all.

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a woman is talking

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Trollolololol

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I think I could do without the outhouse...

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Interesting point, I think I like that.

(but then we wouldn't need an 80 ft. boom crane.....)

that's kind of the point, N.

I'm not sure anyone who ever had to put that thing up really likes it much other than it being traditional.

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I'm not sure anyone who ever had to put that thing up really likes it much

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lol sounds about right

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OCHWFLAKASSOBRTTEFE

...so if the tradition did not start with tu, it became all about tu... "the burning desire to BTHO tu" as it was explained to me when I first came to A&M...regardless, that point is now moot...the tu series is over.

So what was the tradition about? to BTHO "someone" Was it a harvest ritual...just the need to burn something? was it affixed to some team and then executed?

...I must say, although the history explanation convinces me that it may NOT have had its genesis as a tu-specific event, it became that...even if those who built it did not fixate on the aholes from austin, its eventual lighting sure was!

I wonder how many more years it has left? go ahead and bash...i'm honestly curious...maybe we should put a Mizzou tiger head and a columbia road sign! ...you know, adapt/change (hard as it may be for most Ags to do!)

It was about keeping warm

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go ahead and bash

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Okay, I will. Thanks for all of your support for all of us who have continued building and are excited to take Student Bonfire into the next phase of it's growth. /sarcasm

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Build the Hell Outta Student Bonfire

Every time I read Texags and come across some of you snivelling, tradition hating ladies, I lose a little more hope for A&M. Some of you candy-asses clearly got lost on the way to Austin, Lubbock or Waco. Please buy a map and leave. - Buck Turgidson

Bonfire is not about the game, it is more about the friendships and relationships you build while working with fellow students to show support of you school. At least that is what I have always seen and believed and I have been building bonfire since fall of '06 while I was an under grad and even now while in grad school. The spirit will live on always.

Not that anyone asked, but I'll chime in here with a nice broad unarguable blanket statement:

Bonfire meant something different to every person who directly or indirectly participated in it.


By and large the perception is that for those who didn't build the hell, it was just a tradition like midnight yell or pond hoping - something that was unique and fun but that the absolute quality of Texas A&M didn't rely on. It was another in a long string of traditions that added to the environment and could be easily explained away as a "burning desire to beat the hell outta t.u."

For those that were out in the woods and stacking logs it might've been about beating texas, but it was probably more about keeping A&M traditions alive, and for most it was and always will be about the camaraderie. Probably a couple guys felt like badasses swinging an axe, not to say any of those are mutually exclusive.

At the end of the day the only other tradition that Bonfire can really be compared to is, at least in my mind, Muster. And the lines between the two have blurred somewhat since '99. Prior to then you could argue that Bonfire in the Fall and Muster in the Spring were about celebrating life and recognizing the loss of it, respectively. These days it's less simple. There are 12 granite and bronze doorways that stand testament to the fact that since '99, Bonfire can't just be about beating texas.

If an endeavor that has claimed lives is to be continued, a higher reason than a sports rivalry has to be purported. And you see that reflected in opinions across whole generations of Ags. For that reason I think its safe to say that there has been value in building Bonfire for a long time now, and that alone is reason enough to continue on.

If we need the symbol of the paint color on the outhouse to hide behind, then we're missing the point entirely.

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Cledus, I was a fish in '06 too. Doing grad right now as well. Glad to know a couple of other old sobs are still kicking around campus.

Good post, Fitch.

A good friend told me a few months ago:

"Hell, there's always an excuse to build a bonfire".




Never mind the mule being blind, just load the goddamned wagon.

Agree with Fitch 100%

Good post Fitch.

I helped build on-campus Bonfire back in the old days, and I agree with Fitch 100%. It really didn't matter who we were playing, the time we spent working together was the important part.