Pépé: From Bordeaux to Burnt Orange

I was born in France but moved here when I was very young. I don’t remember much about the old country beyond the sound of my grandfather yelling at a tiny television during a rugby match, glass of Bordeaux in his hand. But I do remember the first time my father took me to DKR in Austin. The roar, the heat, the band marching with a precision the French army could only dream of.

My earliest Longhorn memories are Vince Young stretching plays into poetry and Major Applewhite fighting with every ounce of grit he had. To a kid who had one foot in Europe and the other on Texas soil, it was the clearest signal I’d ever had that this was home. Football, not soccer, not rugby. Football with pads, sweat, barbecue smoke, and the whole city dressed in burnt orange.

Growing up, my friends teased me for the name. “Pépé,” they’d say, like I was an old French grandpa. I’d laugh it off and throw the ball a little harder at them in the backyard. They didn’t know that the same stubbornness that made my family board a plane and start over was the same fire I carried every Saturday when I wore my Horns gear.

American football was never just a game to me. It was my passport. Every touchdown was proof that I belonged here, that I wasn’t just the French kid with the funny name. And every SEC Saturday since Texas made the leap, I’ve been loud enough to let Paris hear me.

Sometimes my girlfriend shakes her head when I get too worked up. She’s Dutch, like Tyler’s girl, always reminding me that in Europe sports don’t consume you the same way. I nod, pour another bourbon, and tell her that’s exactly the point. Here, football isn’t a pastime. It’s an inheritance, passed down like a vineyard, cultivated year after year, generation after generation.

So yes, I was born in France. But when Vince Young ran into the endzone in Pasadena, when Major Applewhite showed me what heart looks like in shoulder pads, that was the day I became a son of Texas.

And now, every weekend, when the Horns line up in the SEC, I feel like I’m part of something bigger than borders, bigger than passports, bigger than any map. I feel like Pépé finally found his team.