With the BCS championship game less than a day away, there's not much these guys can do but wait, and hope they've done enough to get through the night in fine form.
Not the team, though that may be true for them as well.
No, we're talking about the guys selling wings all over Austin. They're expecting a Super Bowl-sized night as Texas plays Alabama for the national championship Thursday.
Owner Brad Meltzer says he expects his Wing Zone near the UT campus to do 600 times as much business Thursday as it does on a busy night.
"We ordered enough wings for three weeks -- three weeks of wings for one night," he said. "This should be busier than the Super Bowl. This is our team. This is UT."
Other wing restaurants say they expect similar business during the game.
"This is pretty much the Super Bowl of college football," said Nieman Williams, manager of the Wings 'N More along north Interstate 35. "We're going to have a lot of to go business, a lot of delivery business, a lot of in-house business. It's just going to be big for us all the way around.
Exactly why wings have become the perfect football-watching food is a bit of a mystery, but Williams says he thinks the popularity may be partly in the size of a wing.
"They're a great finger food, and men like them," he said. "And men like football, so they go hand in hand."
Wings 'N More will show the game and will have giveaways throughout the night, he says.
"You can't do any better than wings, football, and I'll throw in beer," said gynecologist John Thoppil, a wings fan we spotted eating lunch Wednesday at Wings 'N More. "There's meat and sauce. What could you go wrong with?"
His lunch companion, Michael Dick, says he's relatively new to the world of wings and football because he grew up in Canada.
"The quintessential wings and football association doesn't happen back where originally I'm from," Dick said. "But down here in the State of Texas, if you aren't eating wings and watching football, apparently you aren't from here. I think it's a way of life almost."
