Beginning this football season, Maroon Out is expanding into every Texas A&M home game.
The Maroon Out organization is encouraging students to wear their 2019 Maroon Out t-shirt to every Aggie game at Kyle Field this season. The Maroon Out tradition originated from the 1998 Texas A&M-Nebraska game in which the Aggies defeated the national champions 28-21. The idea to create a sea of maroon stemmed from Kyle Valentine, Class of 2000, to give Aggies the spirit they needed for that game. The first Maroon Out game led to a shortage of maroon t-shirts throughout the nation due to the high volume of orders, according to the group’s website. For the past 20 years, the student-led organization has designated one home game every season to the tradition.
Communication senior Mari Brown, director of membership for Maroon Out, said throughout the years, the organization and tradition have raised money for class gifts such as the seal in the Academic building and statues on campus. The funds have also gone to the Maroon Out scholarship, which has been given to more than 40 Aggies.
“Ever since [1998], we’ve been creating the Maroon Out shirt just to kind of remind Aggies about the spirit of A&M and to unify the student body over the one common goal: to Maroon Out Kyle Field,” Brown said.
Brown said the decision to expand Maroon Out was made based on the popularity of the tradition.
“We yell at every game, we stand for every game,” Brown said. “The traditions we have … we do them at every game, and Maroon Out is one of them, so we wanted to incorporate that into every game as well.”
The 2019 Maroon Out shirts feature an image of Kyle Field with the slogan “Yell like it’s 1998” underneath. The shirts can be purchased online or in-store from The Warehouse at C.C. Creations, as well as from the campus Barnes and Noble Bookstore and Aggieland Outfitters.
“We were actually able to use an outside designer, Drifting Creative,” Brown said. “So that was really exciting for us to use an outside source, just to get more creative ideas flowing for us as we thought about a shirt design for the new changes we were having this year. The material is also different and higher quality as well.”
Fans have the choice of purchasing a short-sleeve or long-sleeve shirt, as the full season ahead stands. The shirt will also give access to the Maroon Out Tailgate and other numerous pop up events that will be hosted this season.
“We’re going to be having tailgates for every home game, and people can go to the tailgate and use the free stuff we’ll have if they have their Maroon Out shirt on,” Brown said. “We’re really excited to add to the Aggie experience.”