Street shootings and riots in downtown Dallas on the Friday night before the game did not used to be uncommon. The city has had things under a little better control the last 10 years or so, but you’d still have to give me premium pay to get me to go to the West End that night.
The last few TX-OU games I went to, previous to about nine years ago, we always went to the West End. This was a few years after the notorious shootings and the cops were thick and we saw no violence at all. Just a bunch of drunk happy fans.
We lived in Mesquite until I was nine years old, and I remember one time when my grandparents visited from Oklahoma. They had a new car and we went for a ride during TX-OU weekend. Downtown Dallas, we had a ton of beer bottles and other trash thrown at the car because of the OK plates.