Double T’s last ride

Outlined against a bright blue September sky, the Masked Rider rode again. In Texas Tech lore, her mount was named Double T, and it was to be his last ride. They led the Red Raiders out for their 1994 season opener against New Mexico as 27,234 people peered down from the stands of the 50,000-seat Jones Stadium to the Astroturf below. In Lubbock, Texas, people bleed black and red. Texas Tech paraphernalia hangs from the ceilings and on the walls of every bar, convenience store, and restaurant. Originally a prank by students who'd speed unsanctioned on horseback across the football field before games, the mysterious rider on a black horse became the official mascot at the 1954 Gator Bowl, when Joe Kirk Fulton's official entrance as the Masked Rider inspired The Atlanta Journal's Ed Danforth to write, "No team in any bowl game ever made a more sensational entrance."

For the Masked Rider's 40th anniversary in 1994, 17 former Riders came back to campus for the pre-game festivities. A brand-new saddle had been commissioned to replace the one that had been in service for every game entrance and victory lap. While over the previous 40 years there'd been a couple of incidents during the Riders' runs around the field — a trampled SMU cheerleader, a sideswiped official — no one could have imagined that the horse itself was ever in danger. But in the third quarter, during a routine run across the end zone after a Tech score, the Masked Rider fell off Double T and the horse took off for the stadium tunnel, hit the concrete, and died instantly.

"I think people were so stunned and so dumbfounded that they didn't really realize what had happened til it was all over with," said Tech coach Spike Dykes, who was on the sidelines. "He ran right behind us."

Lubbock was in shock. Double T's death was on the front page of the Sunday Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and the Tuesday University Daily. Letters to the editors of both papers were heated and numerous. One Avalanche-Journal reader wrote in to recount the disappointing behavior of UNM's costume mascot Lobo Louie, who the writer claimed ran to the tunnel to look at Double T after the accident: "The UNM mascot then stopped within feet of the animal and made a gesture of shock or surprise not unlike the gesture made by McCauley [sic] Culkin in 'Home Alone'...Next, the UNM mascot went in front of the UNM section and to all appearances mocked the death of Double T by lying on his back with all fours sticking straight up in the air." The University of Oklahoma student paper ran a mock obituary and sent a letter of condolence to Tech's University Daily along with a bottle of glue labeled "Double T." Comedian Bob Goldthwait was on campus that day, and created a routine called "Mascot Suicide" that recounts the incident.

Tragedy is when our quarterback jams a finger opening a beer, comedy is when your live mascot injures a person and dies. Double T receives medical attention in this photo that appeared in University Daily three days after the incident.

Tragedy is when our quarterback jams a finger opening a beer, comedy is when your live mascot injures a person and dies. There wasn't a lot to laugh about at Tech at that time. Goldthwait's joke hinged on the horse being driven to suicide by how horrible Tech's team was, and yeah, the Red Raiders hadn't won more than six games in a season since 1989. Attendance at home games was poor and enrollment was declining. Mercifully, the game was only broadcast on radio, so national coverage and attention was minimal. Were it to happen this season, is there any doubt it would immediately become a terrible GIF, used on the message boards of upcoming opponents to taunt Tech fans? A SportsCenter clip? But on that day in 1994, it was just a local tragedy that threatened to shut down a beloved tradition.

"People say there were apparently 80,000 people there because everybody is like, 'I was there!' I think there were maybe 30,000 people at that game, but it's funny cause people will say, 'Oh yeah, I was there, I saw it.' Probably you didn't," said Stephanie Rhode, the current director of Tech's Spirit Program. Rhode's office in the Student Union is decorated with a commemorative miniature saddle, a wall of photos of cheerleaders, and a photo of herself and former coach Tommy Tuberville with new coach and former quarterback Kliff Kingsbury's head pasted over Tuberville's face. "Of course now people have gone crazy with Coach Kingsbury. He went to school here, he gets Lubbock, he gets Texas Tech, he's one of us."

Rhode oversees cheerleaders and the costume mascot in addition to the Masked Rider program, which is a partnership with the Animal and Food Sciences department. "I lived in town but I was not at the game. Of course, it was horrible. Even if you weren't at the game it was a horrible thing to happen."

Few at the game could have seen Double T go down, said Dykes. "Fortunately, not very many people saw what happened because he ran down the sidelines and then we have that ramp that goes up out of the stadium. Very few people saw it, thank goodness, because that would have left a bad taste in their mouth."

Thank goodness.

One of the fans in attendance that day was Bobbi Britton-Stroud, a Tech graduate, 30-year Lubbock resident and current employee of the university. "It was the season opener. It was a nice day. Everybody was excited for football to get going again. There were a lot of people there and everything was rocking along really well, and then that happened and it just, it was awful. It was awful," she said.

Britton-Stroud was on the west side of the stadium, the Tech sideline and therefore above the path Double T took back towards the tunnel. "We saw the rider and the horse turn and run back toward the tunnel exit, and then we just heard this "Ahhhh," this exclamation in the crowd, and then you saw people running down toward the tunnel." Then they sat in shock waiting to hear about what they'd just seen.

"You were really concerned about the horse, because it's a beautiful animal, but the Rider? Is the Rider okay? Were they injured? It was awful. And then of course as an alum and as a fan you wonder what's gonna happen now with that tradition?"

"Whenever something like that happens," — and here she got a little tearful — "Sorry, whenever something like that happens, time just kind of stands still. It was just so surreal. It's like, 'Of course that didn't happen.' How on earth could something like that happen?"

In retrospect, stories published prior to the game take on an ominous tone. About Double T, Smart told the University Daily "Anything used to spook him. He is still a little skittish, but he has improved 1,000 percent." The new saddle that was put into service was made near College Station, home of rival Texas A&M.

Something had to be done to make sure nothing like this happened again. The Masked Rider Committee prohibited victory runs for a couple of years out of concern for the safety of both rider and horse. Stopping the runs permanently was an idea so distasteful that one of John T. Montford's first acts after being named chancellor in 1996 was to disband the Masked Rider Committee and instruct the Rider to ride after a score in a game that October. He told the Avalanche-Journal "I wanted the horse to ride, and I was frustrated with all the red tape." It was typical railroading from a man known as "Maximum John" during his time as DA, and surely a rare instance of a university system chancellor making decisions about a mascot.

The committee was swiftly reinstated and came up with a safety protocol to account for any possible on-field scenario. Today, more than 30 people are on the field to assist with the Rider's duties, including a doctor and a veterinarian. The program is a large, well-oiled machine that puts potential Riders through their paces before letting them ride out onto the field atop a massive quarter horse before thousands. Rhode said that safety procedures had been thoroughly reevaluated after the 1994 incident, and that's how the Masked Rider has continued to ride. It could have been a lot worse. "I think, I mean, you wonder if it had involved the rider, if someone had died. I mean, the horse died, but you wonder if it, I don't know, I've never actually even thought of that."

Rhode sketched out the path of the horse and rider's entrance on the field, which now includes a trained safety officer set every five yards (previously, the ROTC had been responsible for clearing the horse's path). The horse's route was also altered; instead of running around the entire field, they ride out on a diagonal across it before games, and just go across the opposite end after touchdowns.

"They don't really run out like they did anymore. They kind of trot out now instead of running the real fast dash," said Britton-Stroud. "The rider comes out at not near the breakneck speed. It was very thrilling and exciting, but, you know, there was an element of danger. And that's what makes things thrilling and exciting."

There's a strong security presence not just because animals are unpredictable, but because people can be, too. At a Baylor game several years ago, one sideline photographer tried to cross the field directly in the path of the horse's full-speed entrance run. "The rider that year said if he had put his foot out he would have hit him. It was one of those things I almost couldn't look at because I thought, 'Someone's gonna get hurt.' Luckily, the guy stopped, and the Masked Rider pulled the horse out of the path. It was very scary."

More than any other aspect of the spirit squad, Rhode said Tech fans are most invested in the Rider. "It's interesting when I tell people what I do, because I do work with cheerleaders and dancers and the costume mascot. For some reason, the Masked Rider really resonates with our fans so much. When people talk to me about it they'll often tear up. I've had grown men who just almost will cry because it's so deeply meaningful."

A Texan on horseback is a naturally thrilling image for a Texan, but note that the Masked Rider is no cowboy. Cowboys don't wear a cape. The Rider is more of an outlaw with her mask and finger guns, a Spanish-flavored cross between the Lone Ranger and Zorro. There's more moral ambiguity in the figure than one usually expects from a college mascot, especially one from a region so literal that its towns are named things like Brownfield, Plainview, and Levelland.

"Having a horse as a mascot creates kind of a connection, because he stays with us. He'll stay with us probably 10 to 12 years and so because of that the fans are attached. I'm certainly attached to him," said Mackenzie White, the current Masked Rider. "And then, it's a little bit more thrilling, a horse riding across a field, than a longhorn standing on the sideline or a dog." That's what they have at the University of Texas and Texas A&M.

White is a petite young woman with dark brown hair down to the middle of her back. She decided to come to Tech because of the Masked Rider. When she was visiting schools, the director of Tech's equestrian program invited her to come down to the field during the homecoming game in 2011, and she was sold. She's been around horses her entire life, showing competitively in breed associations, and was also a cheerleader in high school, making her kind of the perfect candidate for a position that requires an experienced rider and spirit leader. White knows about the accident that happened the same year she was born. "I know everybody goes back to that and remembers it, and we try to move past that and encourage people to let it go. It's a scar in the history a little bit," she said.

White will ride out to start the 60th year of the Masked Rider atop Fearless Champion, who entered service last year. He was one of several vetted after Midnight Matador retired. "First we just go and look at them. If you're a horse person you can tell a lot," said White. "If we think they might be a good fit we test them out in a game-like situation or an actual game. Fearless Champion was just an A+ student. He was just bombproof. He's just a good horse with a good mind and always calm. He falls asleep on the sidelines."

The whole farm animal life cycle plays out on the Tech campus. A tiny goat is hanging out in the livestock pen where Fearless Champion is housed. "This is where they bring in animals for slaughter," said White. Just inside the Animal and Food Sciences building is a little restaurant, COWamongus, that serves burgers made from Tech-processed and graded meat, a product of the school's award-winning Meat Science program, whose students judge and grade animals competitively.

Of course, horses aren't food. This isn't Canada or France, and there is a moral taboo against that sort of thing here because horses are considered a different kind of animal — more intelligent, more beloved, worthy of living out their lives as working animals or pets. When Tech mascots retire, they do so in leisure on local farms.

***

West Texas is the Texas of Texas. If any region of the state were to secede, it would be that part of it which is closer to Albuquerque than Houston, both on the map and in its essence. When Governor Pat Neff vetoed a piece of legislation that would have given West Texas its own college in 1921, newspaper editorial pages actually called for secession. Texas Tech was established in 1923, quelling the festering separatist spirit, but to this day it still feels different from the rest of Texas — certainly from Austin or College Station. Now they have the most glamorous coach in all of college football in Kingsbury, and it appears that Tech will try to challenge the Texas/Texas A&M dominance of the state's eyeballs and merchandise sales. Red and black are a lot sharper than burnt orange or maroon are right now.

Lubbock has produced: Rock and roll, in the form of Buddy Holly; the Texas singer-songwriter tradition as personified by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock, strange hacker/culture jammers of the 80s, the Cult of the Dead Cow, pioneering pornography industry member Michael Morrison, who broke ground by selling the Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape online, and the Lubbock Lights, a major UFO/ lights-in-the sky deal. College towns are natural vectors for any surrounding weirdness and creative energy, because where else would it go? It's a couple of hours, give or take, to Amarillo, Midland/Odessa, or Abilene, but over 300 miles to El Paso, Austin, or Fort Worth, and the only interstate in town is I-27, a weird little piece of highway that only exists between Amarillo and Lubbock.

The middle of nowhere is also the center of everything; Lubbock's called the Hub City because it's the nerve center of all the nothing that it's in the middle of. Even the small towns in east and central Texas are within a few hours of cities that top a million people, but for the small towns in West Texas, Lubbock's the biggest thing going.

And in Lubbock, Tech is the only game in town.

***

"They think it's just tumbleweeds and wide-open spaces. So usually they're pleasantly surprised." Kliff Kingsbury before a 2013 game. (Getty Images)

"They think it's just tumbleweeds and wide-open spaces and that's about it," said Kingsbury after a morning practice, referring to campus visitors. "So usually they're pleasantly surprised." Kingsbury's return to Tech as head coach has brought a new shine to the program. Before practice that morning, local cameramen chatted about how the protocols were tightening up, everything changing over the last year with this new coach and the additional media attention.

Not to discount his accomplishments or overly objectify the man, but a great deal of the national attention on Kingsbury focuses on his status as an exceptionally good-looking bachelor and the most style-conscious coach Texas has seen since Tom Landry, albeit with Dri-FIT and Frogskins instead of a Stetson fedora. But Lubbock would love him no less were his aquamarine eyes brown and his countenance more Giametti than Gosling; he reminds them of the fun they had when he ran the air raid offense under Mike Leach. Of course, as a Tech graduate, he really gets Lubbock. And since he gets it, he commissioned an enormous painting of the Masked Rider for his office. He mentioned that Fox Sports just named it the sixth best entrance in college football. "It's a huge part of our game day traditions," he said. "It runs out, and here comes the team, and so I know our fans really are all about it."

Lubbock's isolation is its own kind of home field advantage. "There's a certain synergy out here where Lubbock is the hub and there's 250,000 people and they all bleed red and black and there's nothing for 300 miles — another team, another pro team. And so anything within that 300-mile radius is all pushing its allegiance and its energy towards Texas Tech. I do think there's something special about that that most universities don't have."

That near-monopoly on attention isn't uncommon to college towns, but the vast distance to a major city or even a competing school is unique to Tech. Hardly any D-1 school in the lower 48 is more isolated. Their closest FBS neighbor is the University of North Texas in Denton, 295 long miles away, almost a 5-hour trip if a person drives the speed limit, which no one ever would.

This makes rivalries tough, since there's no nearby natural enemy. Austin and College Station are separated by a mere 100 miles and are the two largest universities in the state by enrollment (Tech is seventh). "You look at Texas and A&M, they're bigger universities, have bigger alumni bases, so I think Texas Tech always has had a chip on its shoulder in trying to be right in there on that level instead of having them a step above," said Kingsbury.

Kingsbury's former coach, Leach — still a hot topic in Lubbock due to his departure under the dual clouds of contract disputes with the university, and allegations of mistreatment by a player, Adam James — thinks Tech might not even care enough about outside opinions to have a chip on its shoulder. "It was more of a 'respect everyone, fear no one' kind of mentality," said Leach. "We were getting ready to explode and a lot of it had to do with the connection between the community, our fans. Basically there was really good chemistry and I thought that helped our team, and other than a handful of dubious characters that ended up in the administration, we were gonna win games and continue to win, there was no question about that."

Leach, who recently published a book about the leadership qualities of Geronimo, appreciated the iconography of the Rider. "I loved the Masked Rider tradition. I loved the thing where he'd pop up and run down the center of the field. I thought that was a heck of a deal," said Leach. "And with all due respect to the male riders, I thought the female riders looked better doing it. In particular if they were blonde, because you had the contrast — first of all, you'd have this stallion that would be gigantic." (The Masked Rider's mount is traditionally a gelding, in truth.) "You had a smaller figure on the horse, so the horse looked even bigger and more surreal. And then you had the contrast of the blonde hair kind of streaming from this whole black image of horse and Masked Rider uniform."

Coincidentally, Leach's arrival at the school in 2000 closely correlated with an end to a streak of bad luck for the Masked Rider's mount which began when Double T died. The horse that followed him, High Red, was recovering from surgery on Tech's farm when he was found dead in a field the night after a storm. The thunder and lightning spooked him to the point he ran into a fence and the impact exploded his heart. The next horse, Black Phantom Raider, had to be put to sleep due to injuries sustained after a sleeping highway driver plowed into the Masked Rider's truck and trailer. Midnight Matador broke the streak to become the program's longest-serving horse, and Rhode suggested keeping the name for the next horse. Maybe it had been a marker of good luck?

But tradition calls for each horse to have his own name. This isn't like USC's Traveler, Florida State's Renegade, or Oklahoma State's Bullet, other notable mascot horses. Texas Tech was the first school to have a horse mascot, and maybe that's why each Masked Rider's mount is unique. Most animal mascots might have a name in parenthesis, but usually they're just one in a sequence; Texas is on Bevo XIV (the steer) and A&M is on Reville VIII (the dog). But the horse the Masked Rider rides always has its own name instead of merely a number. It's not "the Matador," it's Double T, or Midnight Matador, or Fearless Champion — the last of which was taken from Tech's spirit song.

***

Game tapes are held at the Tech archives, which got them from the athletic department. An archivist said some of them have damage from being stored in a box under the stadium somewhere that wasn't climate-controlled. They're a little fuzzy, and the picture goes in and out of focus, but when she popped one into a playback monitor, an image of the Masked Rider on the sidelines came into perfect view. The raw field footage starts just after the beginning of the second half.

A few minutes later, the screen shows the scoreboard. It's 8:56 in the third quarter and Tech has tied it up, 17-17. Masked Rider Amy Smart is on top of Double T and they run across the field and turn at the back of the end zone. Just as they race over the first T in the "Texas Tech University" painted across the wall, Smart falls over the left side of the horse. It looks scarily like her head smacks the wall as she hits the ground. The camera follows the horse — in silence, there's no sound on these tapes — as he gallops back across the end zone and then down the Tech sideline, the saddle now slid completely around his side, empty stirrups dangling. People scatter, some crouch against the wall as he veers towards them, and stare.

Double T then disappears from view into the tunnel at the other end of the field. It feels like it takes forever, but it's only been about 20 seconds since the rider fell. The camera continues for a few seconds, taking in an official who's standing and staring, then cuts to the next kickoff.

Knowing what you're going to see, after reading a dozen articles about it, in no way makes it any easier. It's a queasy feeling only comparable to — if less graphic than — videos of Tony Stewart hitting Kevin Ward or Kevin Ware's leg break. There's no way around the fact that this is a horse snuff tape.

There is a second tape that looks like one of those Jumbotron highlight tapes played before a home game. It's much clearer than the field-level film. The tape is titled "A Special Tribute: Double T." Smart is shown atop the horse earlier in the game, smiling, golden-brown hair and red satin cape streaming behind her. Oddly enough, or even unflinchingly, it shows his final run. And on this tape, it's visible when he runs into the tunnel and falls to the ground.

There are a lot of videos of terrible on-field accidents and injuries available to the sports fan, but not many in which you see an innocent accessory to the game die. To that point Double T had been in service for a year without incident. Was there a reason for his sudden spooking?

The only variable that day was the new saddle. Made near College Station.

***

The one person who could give a first-hand account of the last ride, Amy Smart, wasn't reachable through the Spirit Program, but she was on Facebook. Now Amy Crownover, she's married with two sons and still lives in West Texas. She was riding before she was able to walk and has horses out in the back of her property outside of Midland. She's a born Red Raider, having come from a family of Tech graduates; her father and an older brother and sister all attended. She plans to be in attendance for the 60th anniversary celebrations that will take place at the September 13th game vs Arkansas. Now it would be understandable if she didn't want to talk about that day, but Crownover couldn't have been more gracious, mentioning more than once her desire that Tech should be seen in a positive light.

"I would say definitely that the correct and true story never was reported. There was all kinds of crazy things that were reported that didn't happen," said Crownover. "Everywhere says he ran into the wall and he didn't run into a wall."

Crownover said that Double T was just doing what came naturally when a horse loses its rider before suffering from bad footing and worse luck. "He was just doing what he knew. He was just getting out of the stadium. He ran back down the west track and then turned to go up the ramp, and when he turned, he slipped on the pavement there, because it went from a track to concrete, so his feet just slipped out from under him when he went around that corner, and when he fell, he hit his head and it just killed him instantly."

It was a slip-and-fall, occasioned merely by a horse losing his rider and doing what horses do without a rider to guide them — head for home. But why did he lose his rider? Crownover had adjusted the brand-new saddle prior to the game and thinks maybe some other adjustments were made (or not) by a well-meaning attendant before the game. "Something came loose on the right side of the saddle," said Crownover. "I'm not sure what happened, I just know that an off-side billet came loose and so the saddle just basically came off. When he was running, it was underneath him. There was no way the saddle was gonna stay on, there was no way I was gonna stay on."

There was also no way she was going to stay off: she was back in the saddle before the game the very next week, when Tech played a top-ranked Nebraska team.

"I just had some minor facial injuries, just a black eye and I sprained my wrist," she said. "We had a game the very next weekend, of course everyone was very supportive, so I had people offering their horses to be able to be used in the games. So the very next game I was riding."

Texas Tech and Lubbock could no more stop the Masked Rider than it could give up guitar music or air travel because Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. It's home to the tallest building that ever withstood a direct hit from an F-5 tornado, and they didn't stop building in the plains after that.

Out in west Texas, there's no percentage in dwelling on the random and terrible. There's only one thing a person can do: Get back on the horse.