Alright, so today I’m gonna ramble about something I messed around with recently: setting up a way to listen to Texas Longhorns football games on the radio, since I’m never close to a TV when they’re playing. It’s kinda a pain, but I figured it out, so here’s the lowdown.
First off, I knew the Longhorns have a radio broadcast. Figured it’d be some local station. So, I started with the obvious: Google. Just typed in “Texas Longhorns football radio network” or something close to that. Boom, got a hit for the official Texas Athletics website. They usually have a list of all the affiliate stations.
Next step: digging through the station list. It’s usually a bunch of small-town AM stations you’ve never heard of. I was hoping for something I could stream online. That’s the key, right? I don’t want to lug around a radio. So, I started checking each station’s website listed on the Texas Athletics site.
This is where it got tedious. Some stations have really janky websites. Some don’t even have a streaming option listed. Clicking through, looking for a “Listen Live” button, or something similar. Found a few that had online streams, but half of them were just playing music or talk radio when I checked. Needed to find one that actually carried the games.
Then I had an idea. Instead of checking each station’s website, I tried searching for “Texas Longhorns radio stream” and variations of that, on streaming radio apps like TuneIn and iHeartRadio. Sometimes, you get lucky, and someone has already figured it out and set it up on those platforms.
Hit paydirt with iHeartRadio. Found a station, maybe it was KVET or something, that was listed as the flagship station. They had a stream going! Listened to the pre-game show, made sure it was legit. Yes! Finally.
Okay, so I had a stream, but I wanted to make it easy to access on my phone. So, I saved the iHeartRadio link to my phone’s home screen as a shortcut. Basically, created a little app icon that just opens the stream directly. Easy peasy.
Finally, the last piece: making sure it actually WORKS during the game. You know how streams can be finicky. So, I tested it out during a non-game broadcast. Ran into a problem: the iHeartRadio app kept buffering. Annoying.
Ended up going back to the Texas Athletics website and digging deeper. Found a link to the Longhorn IMG Radio Network. Turns out, they have their own dedicated streaming service. Had to create an account (ugh), but the stream was way more stable and reliable than the iHeartRadio one.
So, the final setup: Longhorn IMG Radio Network stream saved as a shortcut on my phone’s home screen. Tested it during multiple games. Works like a charm. Now I can listen to the games wherever I am, without having to mess with finding a TV or dealing with crummy radio reception.
Lessons learned:
- Start with the official team website. They usually have the most accurate info.
- Don’t be afraid to try different streaming platforms.
- Test your setup before the game starts. Murphy’s Law, right?
- Sometimes, the official team stream is the best option, even if it requires an account.
That’s it. Go Horns!
