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Oregon student Sam Tidrich-Schmidt was hoping to just get a picture with Big Boi. Then he saw André 3000.
(Photo courtesy of Sam Tidrick-Schmidt)
When Sam Tidrick-Schmidt saw Antwan Patton — better known as the rapper Big Boi from the group Outkast — at the Oregon game on Saturday, he had a plan for how he was going to keep it cool.
See, Tidrick-Schmidt isn’t new to this. He’s a fifth-year senior at Oregon, a member of the Pit Crew and arrived at Autzen early to help usher freshmen down to their seats when he caught a glimpse a couple sections over of Patton, whose son Cross joined the team as a walk-on in 2019.
“I’ve had the pleasure of running into him once or twice and he’s been really cool,” Tidrick-Schmidt said. “And I kept telling my friend Patrick that his time would come. It just happened to be in the coolest way.”
Being the expert, Tidrick-Schmidt ascended the steps at Autzen from the bottom of Section 8 to the top of the concourse. Nobody wants that awkward extended eye-contact of trying to greet a celebrity from the front, and Tidrick-Schmidt figured he and Patrick McMahon would coyly descend the stairs and pretend to recognize the entertainer as they passed and ask for a picture.
“We’re just huge music nerds,” he said, “and there was nobody around him, so figured we could probably go bug him really quick and it wouldn’t totally blow up his spot.”
But as they got closer, Tidrick-Schmidt quickly realized it wasn’t just Big Boi’s spot. It was also André “3000” Benjamin’s spot, the second-half of the duo that’s won six Grammys, sold more than 25 million records and hasn’t put out an album together since 2006’s Idlewild.
“I’ve met Big Boi a few times, but I knew that if I started looking at André I would be a mess. Patrick’s holding it together as best as he can and he kept hitting me on the shoulder like, ‘Be cool. We have to be somewhat civilized,’” Tidrick-Schmidt said. “We just told them that we were big fans of their music and the art that they’ve put into the world and kindly asked if we could take a picture.
“I mean, it’s awesome enough seeing Big Boi on his own. Seeing André 3000 on his own is incredible. But seeing them both together? It’s like a unicorn.”
Tidrick-Schmidt knows the internet pretty well. He’s a college student with around 700 twitter followers. He hosts a podcast and knew that posting the photo could pick up some steam, maybe even netting him a few dozen retweets and a couple hundred likes.
“Most of the time Twitter just feels like you’re screaming into the void,” he said.
But Section 8 of Autzen doesn’t have great cell service, meaning Tidrick-Schmidt’s phone sat silent in his pocket as Oregon raced out to a 24-10 lead in the first half. But when everyone got up to leave for the break, the vibrations started coming in. At half, the post had 1,500 retweets and Tidrick-Schmidt had ESPN all up in his DMs. By the time he got home after Oregon’s 41-19 win, the tweet was finally dying down around 20,000 likes. He went to bed.
“The next wave came when dawn struck on the East Coast,” he said. “That’s when I turned notifications off.”
In total, Tidrick-Schmidt’s photo has now been liked 40,000 times, retweeted 6,000 times and even shared by Big Boi himself to his 1.2 million followers.
But that was just gravy, Tidrick-Schmidt said.
“Truthfully, at the end of the day the coolest part was just being able to see that duo together for half a second,” he said. “It was unreal.”
— Tyson Alger
@tysonalger
P.S.: From when I worked for a publication that had enough pull to get Big Boi on the phone.
