Robert Griffin III remembers the moment he and his Baylor team took down Texas on the road back in 2010.
In part, it’s because it was the Bears’ first win over the Longhorns since 1997 and their first victory in Austin at Texas Memorial Stadium since 1991. That’s an awfully long time for any team to go without a win or road win against an in-state foe.
But Griffin — now a college football analyst for ESPN — also remembers that victory being so sweet because of how wild, raucous and intimidating Texas’ home environment was and can be for opposing players.
“It was like a lot of history there,” Griffin said about Baylor’s first road win against Texas in almost two decades. “And the fact that when you walk into that stadium, they don’t believe you have a chance. But when you see all the cowboy hats and the cowboy and cowgirl boots and the burnt orange, it’s just overcoming a narrative that you don’t have a chance.
“Probably every player on our team at Baylor who wanted to go play at Texas, and they didn’t get that opportunity. So there’s a little bit of self doubt that are we even good enough?”
The menacing atmosphere the 2011 Heisman Trophy winner experienced at Texas Memorial Stadium is why it was No. 1 for him in terms of toughest college football venues to play in.
Griffin was one of 68 former FBS players, who played between 2001 and 2021, surveyed in August by Goodyear and The Player’s Tribune about the hardest away games to play.
But in the survey results, Texas was up there but not actually No. 1.
That honor belongs to Happy Valley. Penn State’s Beaver Stadium was the toughest road-game environment to play in, followed by LSU’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge and Oregon’s Autzen Stadium in Eugene to round out the top three. Ohio State, Michigan and Texas were placed in a three-way tie for fourth.
The survey followed up about the factors that contributed to former college players’ rankings, and the respective fan bases were the primary reason, followed by the climate, which makes sense because Happy Valley in November can be brutal.
Of course, Griffin’s experiences and perspective is based only on where he and the Bears played during between 2008 and 2011 with the team. He never played at or even against Penn State, LSU, Ohio State or Oregon.
But, along with Texas, Texas A&M, Nebraska and Texas Tech were some of the worst environments to be an opposing player in, Griffin said while promoting the Goodyear and Player’s Tribune’s survey results.
For him, it’s about more than the size of the stadiums because packing thousands of fans into a venue certainly has an impact, but traditions and history, like Baylor against Texas, were crucial too.
“You go out to [Texas Tech in] Lubbock, which, what’s out there in Lubbock?” he continued. “Well, they got football, and they love their football. So for us, it was just navigating that, the hostility of some of the fans, because of their extreme fandom for the football teams.”
For Griffin, Oklahoma State and, somewhat surprisingly, UConn were high on his list of most challenging and most hostile places to play too.
“Oklahoma State with how close the field to the sideline,” he added. “Probably got like five, six yards deep, and the fans, [it] feels like they’re breathing on the back of your neck. That was a tough place to play.
“For me, it was also UConn, which is kind of surprising to some people. But when I was in college, UConn was a top-15 team. And their fans had a lot of liquid encouragement at a night game, and it was it was loud. It was one of the hardest hardest places for us to play.”
