Hey, there are butts in seats and they are selling beer so it's working for them. The club music is crowd Viagra. Students shouldn't need it, but everyone's doing it. They have taken a lot of stuff that used to be organic: cheerleading, the band, the Texas Fight cheer, etc, and turned it into a sequence of events. There's only one Texas Fight chant per game because they do it when the Jumbotron tells them to do it and it would not occur to anyone to do it spontaniously.
I remember a mid-90's Texas/OU game when our offense was in neutral, but the defense was kicking butt. The Texas side started doing "Defense" chants during the second half for every play, every series and the defense kept getting better and better. It was awesome and a lot of fun. That's not going to happen when you rely on a sound system.
I remember a game when the starting QB was struggling and the cheerleaders were leading a cheer that was "What do you want? TD. What's that? Touch down!". The students changed it to "Who do you want? JB. Who's that? James Brown!" Hilarious and the students went nuts when Brown got into the game. He deserved to start and he's still one of my favorite Longhorns.
Longhorn Band is still awesome, but they can't compete with artificial noise. They are coming back from some down years, with COVID hitting at the same time that the "Eyes of Texas" controversy hit. They are working hard to be more diverse. The administration and alumni are supporting them and they are well funded.
Texas high school bands are the strongest in the nation and the band gets smart kids from those bands that can play their butt off. Some of these kids come to Texas to become the next generation of music educators and some will become our next engineers, business leaders, doctors and lawyers. It would be great if they were featured more in the stadium but they are still students having fun getting ready to be leaders, just like those before them.