Step inside the co-op at University of Texas at Austin these days, and you can feel the buzz of a winning season. The jerseys of quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning hang from wall racks, too in demand to dangle there for long. The members of the bald mannequin family by the front door show off their excitement about joining the Southeastern Conference. They sport SEC T-shirts and other burnt orange gear—even their plastic dog wears a Longhorns-branded harness. Beside them, a sign advertises a new “Celebrate the Win” T-shirt, a tribute to UT’s recent triumph over the University of Michigan—a souvenir to ensure the sweetness of victory lasts a little longer.
As the world of Texas college football spins this fall, the collegiate shops across the state spin along with it. From Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks fans in the east to Texas Tech Red Raiders supporters in the west, the need to show one’s team colors is a primal imperative. Of the millions of fans filling the seats of college stadiums across the state, almost all will be sporting well-chosen game-day gear, from graphic tees to guayaberas to the unofficial sorority girl uniform of short skirts and cowboy boots. Behind many of these outfits is a college bookstore or boutique that must be as nimble and decisive in restocking its inventory as Arch Manning evading a sack. What the fans want in this retail game moves quickly, and the suppliers must adjust their plays accordingly.
“This is not a boring job,” says Stephanie Massengale, a Texas Tech alum who opened the Matador, a Tech boutique, across from campus in 2012 with her husband, Steve, also a Tech grad. “It all moves and changes depending on the variables of what’s going on, how the team is performing. When the Texas Tech basketball team went to the Final Four, we had lines out the door. It’s thrilling but exhausting. You’re on a ride, and you’ve got to keep the product coming in.”
For collegiate retailers across the state, it’s hard to plan for the shifting variables of the market—there could be a change in team branding, an unexpected celebrity stunt, or even a combo of the two. In 2019, former Texas Tech Red Raider and current NFL superstar Patrick Mahomes came to a game with the name of his brand sponsor, Adidas, written on a piece of tape covering the Under Armour logo on his Tech shirt. In quick response, Tech shop Red Raider Outfitter made its own “Mahomes Tape” Adidas T-shirt, which promptly sold out. Thanks to Mahomes’s influence, Tech athletics ended its contract with Under Armour in mid-2024 and switched to Adidas—forcing its retailers to pick up Adidas too.
Collegiate retailers also capitalize on unforeseen game-day twists—even marsupial interferences. Last year, when a giant possum ran across the field during a TCU-Tech game, officials had to stop play and haul it off with a snare pole. Tech fans rallied around the pissed-off possum, and it gained such notoriety that Massengale’s team designed an angry possum football T-shirt. It sold out in days.
And then there are the star quarterbacks. When Texas Christian University went to the national championship at the end of the 2022–23 season, the demand for Horned Frogs gear skyrocketed. The TCU bookstore, part of the national Follett collegiate bookstore chain, shipped out thousands of merchandise orders to fans around the country and the world. Jerseys with the name and number of Max Duggan, the team’s star quarterback and a Heisman candidate, had turned to gold—if only you could get your hands on one.
“It really was a remarkable time,” says Rawn Johnson, market leader for Follett at TCU. “Our buyers were scrambling to get anything they possibly could. But Duggan had opted in to NIL [the policy that allows NCAA athletes to profit from the use of their names, images, and likenesses] very late in the season, and we had a limited number of jerseys that we could turn into Max Duggan jerseys. We had lines of people showing up at six in the evening, when we got the new supplies delivered.”
Part of the jersey challenge is that collegiate bookstore buyers must prebuy their selections at least a year in advance, way before anyone knows how the season will go. “Buying is definitely a gamble,” says Olivia Biagi, the vice president of merchandising at UT-Austin’s University Co-op. She’s spent her entire eighteen-year career in the U.S. collegiate bookstore industry and sees Texans as “a particularly passionate fan base.”
Biagi and her team knew there would be a lot of excitement about Arch Manning this year and prebooked accordingly. But the co-op also hedged its bets by opening a new custom shop in the middle of the store—part of a major remodel this summer—where customers can select a name and have it heat-pressed onto a jersey. The names of quarterbacks Manning and Ewers are the most popular, though about half of shoppers opt for their own names.
College shops face stiff competition from online megastores like Fanatics, and even chains such as Walmart and Walgreens carry college gear. But for the superfans, the thrill is tied to shopping locally.
For many Aggies, a visit to Aggieland Outfitters, with a location five minutes’ walking distance from A&M’s Kyle Field, is a pregame ritual. Launched in 2000 by Fadi Kalaouze, who got his start in fan fashion when he began designing and selling Aggie tees as a struggling college student in the 1980s, Aggieland now has three locations in College Station where you can pick up, say, a maroon romper with a zippered front, an exclusive bottle of Messina Hof’s Gig ’Em Red wine, and an A&M cheerleading dress for your dog.
When it comes to women’s game-day fashion, Biagi has seen trends come and go. “We’ve got Cowboy Carter and the Hadid sisters being all in on cowboy life right now, so that Western influence is really showing up at the yearly Dallas Apparel Market, where we source fashion items,” says Biagi. On the co-op floor, a mannequin in burnt orange corduroy flare pants, a matching halter vest, a silver concho belt, and a white cowboy hat with sequins looks like she got the memo. Over in Lubbock, Massengale says bling is in. “When I was at Tech, I mean, you just wore a T-shirt,” she says. “Now the girls dress up, and sparkle is good.” And for men’s fashion? “It’s polos, polos all day long,” says Biagi. The coaches’ sideline attire also fires up the fans: When UT Coach Sarkisian sported a white Nike hoodie at a recent game, the co-op saw sales of white Nike hoodies shoot up. “You see it all the time,” says Massengale. “If fans see a coach wearing a specific polo, they come in the store asking me, ‘Where’s that polo?’ So you have to watch the coaches and be ready.”
As football season marches inexorably toward the college bowl games and a chance at a national championship, millions of Texan fans, hopes high, will be filling stadiums across the state. While the destiny of each team is a question mark, Texas college retailers, like athletes executing a well-played flea flicker, must stay quick on their toes.
