There may not have been a better morning in Billy Goldberg's quest to see every major college team play football than the one in Texas in 2008 when he discovered Snow's BBQ.
Goldberg's big passion in life is college football, except when he gets near a great barbecue joint. They don't get any better than Snow's.
Goldberg, who turns 43 Wednesday, will be in Madison on Saturday because he wants to check Utah State off his list of Division I college football teams he's seen play. He saw the Badgers play previously. More on that, and his Madison visit, momentarily.
First, he needs to rhapsodize about Snow's BBQ.
"They're only open Saturdays!" Goldberg enthused Tuesday from Beverly Hills, where he lives and works. "Eight a.m. until the meat runs out."
Goldberg was driving from Austin to College Station to see Texas A&M play a home football game when he came across Snow's in Lexington. He was in the company of two frequent co-conspirators, brothers-in-law Ronnie and Lee Kaplan.
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The owner of Snow's is a former rodeo clown who hired a woman in her early 70s named Tootsie to be his pit boss. Snow's was known only to a reverential few until shortly before Goldberg's visit, when Texas Monthly named it the best barbecue in Texas and Calvin Trillin of the New Yorker showed up to see what all the fuss was about.
Goldberg loved Snow's, of course. Back then, anyway, it met all his requisites for great Southern cuisine: 1) no more than two locations, and preferably just one; 2) no website, or at least not much of one; and 3) a screen door.
Goldberg enjoyed his football Saturday in College Station almost as much as the barbecue at Snow's. He ranks it in the top two for atmosphere of any he's experienced (Oxford, Miss. — Ole Miss — is the other). Given what he's heard of Camp Randall, he expects Madison this weekend to be a contender.
Goldberg worked in a variety of executive positions in arenas where sports, media and entertainment intersect, including the William Morris Agency and the Tennis Channel.
His current business development company, the Buckeye Group, is named for the college team in his native Columbus, Ohio.
Goldberg grew up attending Ohio State games, which is where he saw the Badgers. He figures there's a good chance he was conceived the January night in 1969 after the Buckeyes beat USC in the Rose Bowl to win a national championship.
"You really don't want to think too much about that," he said, laughing. "That's too much detail about your parents' lives."
Goldberg had season tickets for UCLA football since moving to California, and one night in 2006 — remembering all those Big Ten games as a kid — he made a list of the major college teams he'd seen play in person. It turned out he saw 63, or roughly half the teams in Division I.
Goldberg enlisted his brothers-in-law and decided to see how many different teams he could see play.
Currently at 81 — 82 after Saturday — Goldberg's goal is to see all of the approximately 120 in Division I in the next two decades. By then he will be 65.
"It's about more than football," he said. "It's a great way to see the country. I've met all kinds of interesting characters and had tons of good local food."
Every trip, he said, produces memories. Goldberg recalled pulling up to the stadium in Alabama for an Arkansas-Auburn game and finding Momma Goldberg's Deli across the street. "Destiny," he said.
At a sold-out Alabama-Mississippi game in Oxford he was having a terrible time buying a ticket outside the stadium until it dawned on him he was wearing an Alabama cap. He removed it and some people immediately asked, "Are you an Ole Miss fan?"
"Of course," Goldberg said. They not only sold him a ticket, they invited him to their tailgate.
His brothers-in-law won't be along for this week's Wisconsin trip. Goldberg said he was chatting with a friend in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and the magic of Lambeau Field came up. Neither had been to a game in Green Bay.
Goldberg did some figuring, and discovered they could see the Packers game with the Bears on Thursday and the Badgers-Utah State Saturday at Camp Randall.
"We're mixing in a Brewers game on Friday," Goldberg said.
Now the only question is whether the brats at Miller Park can make him forget the barbecue at Snow's.
Contact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com. His column appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.