Friday night’s main draw at Billy Bob’s Texas is a fellow named Sam Barber.

“A Tik Tok guy,” someone in the know growls at me. “But it’s sold out.” 

Well, the opening act featured the world’s best sports fanatics and another kind of draw.

He’s decked out in full-on, over-the-top Azzurri fan gear — a bright blue Italy national team jersey, jeans cuffed just so, and solid green boots that complete the Italian-flag color scheme.

Around his neck, he’s sporting a red-white-and-blue scarf, and the centerpiece is a gloriously loud tri-color hat stacked like a festive tower: red brim, white middle, green top, crowned with a little soccer ball for good measure.

He’s holding a beer that was sponsored — that is, paid for — by a fan of the Mexican National Team.

In my best Italian that I do not possess, I ask him from which part of The Boot he is from.

“I’m from Dallas,” Mark Pesina says to me.

Like, Dallas, Texas?

“Yup. I grew up right down the street from St. Paul Hospital.”

Was there no party over there?

“Not really,” Pesina says. “They had something going on, I think, at small bars, but not like this. Not this.”

FIFA World Cup 2026 began on Friday, and this was a draw party at the World’s Largest Honky Tonk. To the uninitiated, the draw is seemingly second to the game itself. Several hundred — maybe a thousand-plus — showed up to watch the drawing live.

The 12 groups of four that will comprise the largest World Cup in history were revealed Friday during a draw ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump was in attendance, no doubt declaring that this World Cup — hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico — will be like nothing anyone has ever seen before.

The World Cup will be played June 11-July 19. Dallas-Fort Worth is poised to enjoy a piece of the forecast $30 billion economic impact on the U.S. economy. Up to 10 million international visitors are expected. 

A substitute was called in to cover Rene Rosales’ classes in Everman, where he is a physical education teacher. Rosales took the day off just to do this. He was born in Mexico and is now a citizen of the U.S. So, too, is his friend Oscar Polanco, a native of Peru.

“We migrated in the seventies and eighties,” Rosales says. “We became citizens, and we love this city.

“This is a great atmosphere,” he says of the party. “It’s awesome.”

The draw, Rosales instructs, is where the most important soccer — err, futbol — pastime begins: gambling.

I beg him to tell me because, well, my favorite pastime is blowing money.

Two out of every group move on to bracket play. “For at least the last 10 World Cups, every host country has come out of their groups,” he says.

The way I understand it, it’ll be tantamount to turning water into wine if the Americans can make it out of their Group D with Paraguay, Australia, and the winner of a playoff.

Pesina’s Italy crew, which has not qualified for the past two World Cups, must navigate a playoff to get in this year’s. The Italians, four-time World Cup champions, face Northern Ireland in a playoff semifinal match on March 26. If they win, the Azzurri will play either Wales or Bosnia and Herzegovina in a final on March 31.

“I bought the tickets [for the draw party] right after I found out about it,” Pesina says. “I made sure I took the day off because I didn’t want to show up on TV and I had called in sick.”

We’ll find out on Saturday which teams are going where. TCU will be a host site for one of the teams.

“It’s a big moment for Fort Worth and TCU,” TCU Athletic Director Mike Buddie says. “It’s a great opportunity for us to have some of our soccer athletes rub elbows with some of the most talented athletes on the planet.

“Anytime you get the opportunity to see the best people on the planet do what they do, it’s really exciting.”