On Saturday afternoon, as he looks out at the crowd of 60,000 he has helped entice to Wembley Stadium, Brian Dubiski’s dream will become a reality. But, as Arizona State and Kansas make history by playing the first US college football game in Britain, Dubiski will think most of his daughter, Madison, who was crushed to death at the age of 23. Madison and nine other people were trampled and suffocated by a crowd at a Travis Scott concert in Houston in November 2021.
Dubiski now dedicates his life to keeping people safe at sporting events and concerts and, since December, Wembley is one of the stadiums that follows the protocols he introduced. As the chairman, CEO and co-founder of Union Jack Classic, which has planned and organised Saturday’s game, Dubiski will sit in the Royal Box at Wembley. His memories of Madison will also be sparked by the sight of the cheerleaders for both teams – for his daughter also used to be a cheerleader.
The powerfully built 57-year-old, who played college football for Texas Tech, pauses. It’s a hard line to walk because, emotionally, I don’t think I’ll ever heal. But everything I do is about representing Madison.
It’s a big reason I did this game at Wembley.” Before we talk about college football, which is second only to the NFL as the most popular sport in the US, Dubiski revisits the terrible day of his daughter’s death. As the enthusiastic texts from Madison and her brother, Ty, lapsed into silence and local television began to report on trouble at the Astroworld festival hosted by Scott, Dubiski remembers his “really bad feeling”. After thousands of ticketless fans stormed the gates and the crowd surged towards the stage, Madison and Ty were separated and, without any coherent safety procedures in place, nearly 5,000 people were injured.
When news reached Dubiski he raced to the hospital where his daughter had been taken. He stumbled into a catastrophe: “I could hear Madison’s mother, Michelle, screaming. Your stomach sinks and your heart breaks and it’s like a slow-motion black-and-white horror movie, walking through the hospital halls at 2am.
I remember the doctor looking up at me and just shaking his head. My knees buckled and I fell.” I have already met his hugely likable son, Ty, who survived the tragedy and is now working alongside him on Saturday’s game. But in a quiet office Dubiski shudders: “Ty walks in and all he could hear was me screaming ‘no’ in this horrible, deep cry.
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