Rise and Shout

One New Year's Day I was feeling mildly rebellious, so I decided to do something that was rarely done in our house: I watched football. I'm not kidding. I plunked myself down on my parent's bed and watched a football game. I have no recollection of who played or how long I watched, so the impact must not have been great.

In high school I attended one football game. I was in show choir and we were doing a fundraiser which culminated in an upstanding member of the community kissing a pig during half-time. There were eight finalists for the snort-smooch and I was asked to escort one of them to the field. I think I left once my pig-duties were done.

At BYU I was shocked at how many people had these things called 'All Sport's Passes.' They would dress up in blue, paint their faces, and return to the dorms a few hours later with matching sunburns and hoarse voices. (I thought BYU should have offered an All Show Pass, a ticket that gained the owner access into all performing arts events. I would have totally bought one of those. If it existed.) I went to the Homecoming game because somebody had an extra ticket, but I didn't really know what was going on. I think I went to one other game a few years later, but it was at someone else's request (and on their dollar).

I was aware of football season, but more in the way that one is aware of a fly buzzing around their head. The area around campus would become a mad-house and we would have to remember to avoid main roads before and after games. When people would ask if I saw the game (whichever game it was at the time) I would smile and say "No, I missed it" instead of, "No, I think it's an amazing waste of time."

Last Saturday we made the trek down to BYU to take the boys bowling. We figured it would be a fun family activity, and we were right. We had come prepared with a picnic dinner and at the conclusion of our game we headed upstairs to find a place in the Wilkinson Student Center to eat. It was once we arrived on the main floor that I started to wonder what was going on. There were people everywhere. Now, the Wilk is often hopping on weekdays, but Saturday is usually a day of calm for the building. Not so last week. Turns out the first BYU football game of the season had just started and was being broadcast by ESPN. Huge screens showed the game in progress. Peter was interested in what was going on, so we stopped and watched for a few minutes before continuing.

When we got home Bryan asked Peter if he wanted to watch the last few minutes of the football game. Peter said yes and the boys retired to the living room. Neither Bryan nor I knew which channel ESPN was on because we had deleted it when we first moved in. After finding it (channel 35 for us) they started watching. I joined them because I was tired and wanted to sit down.

You know what? It was, dare I say it, fun. The game was exciting, a nail-biter even. Bryan explained everything that was happening on the field. (I had no idea that he knew so much about football, but I shouldn't have been. Bryan seems to know something about everything.) We were the underdog. It came down to the last three minutes of the game. And we won, 14-13. The boys had fun and Bryan and I sang the Cougar fight song. I even tried to come up with some clever Facebook status about being a proud Cougar, but was unable to because too many of my friends are not from BYU and I didn't want them to think I was celebrating being a heavily made-up middle-aged woman in leopard-print leggings that hit on college-age men, because I'm not any of those things.

As I lay in bed that night I wondered if I was being somehow untrue to my artistic heritage by watching a football game. Hadn't I conscientiously chosen to avoid the rough-and-tumble sport? And if I had, why? What had made me decide that football was beneath me? (That's a horribly prideful thing to fess-up to, but it's true.)

I have come to the following conclusion: it's okay to watch a football game, especially one that my alma mater is playing in. And it's okay to enjoy it. It doesn't detract from my intellectual or artistic interests, as long as I don't dive in and devote all my time and energy to it.

And when Bryan's grandpa asks us if we've seen the game (and he will, he always does) we'll be able to say yes.