Hi. My Name is Adam and I’m a BYU football fan.
It’s really hard to admit it… but isn’t step 1 just admitting that you have a problem? Well, I have a problem. I’ve had this problem for about 20 years. I remember very well the championship year. I even had a souvenir from that team… a gold pen in an embossed case. For a young geek in training, that’s a pretty major display of fanatacism. Since then the team has had its ups and downs, mostly ups other than the last two seasons, and I’ve been an armchair fan for most of that time. I’ve only ever attended two home games, and no away games, and they’re the only team I watch (I don’t have 4 hours chunks of time to watch other games), so I guess you could say I have a mildish form of the disease. However, I’ve come to actually understand and enjoy a contact spectator sport, which would really have surprised me as a teenager and I think still surprises my parents. I’m the only one in my family who seems to care very much. Of course, I went to BYU while none of my siblings did, and they’re the only division 1A school around here, so maybe it makes sense. My parents attended BYU before LaVell Edwards took the helm, so their lack of enthusiasm can be excused.
In any case, last night at close to the end of the first quarter the signal on our Dish Network flickered, and though I didn’t know it at the time, my wife and I were thinking the same thing: “It wouldn’t matter much if we don’t get to see the rest of this game… our team sucks.” Good thing the video came back. Last night was like watching BYU football in the glory days.. hard fighting defense and an offense that takes chances and makes the big plays. It was a thing of true beauty. We saw it for a few minutes, maybe a whole quarter, last week as well. Of course no one expected us to beat the #1 ranked team in the nation last week, but maybe we had a chance against #21 last night. And, indeed, after holding them to about half of what they’ve been averaging so far this year score wise, and putting up some impressive offensive efforts of our own, and above all, just looking like we were playing with a lot of heart, it all came down to a botched two point conversion by them and a field goal attempt by us in the last 30 seconds of play. Byu 27, BSU 28. But we have Matt Payne, by far the most accurate player on the team, one of the best kickers in the country, and the one man who had had an absolutely stellar night already. He put two enormous hits on the kick returner for the other team, even the commentators in the booth were singing his praises. Oddly enough, his kicking did seem a bit off through the game… he had kicked a 79 yard punt last week, but was only kicking 40-50 yarders in this game. In any case, he had already made two extra points and a field goal, so we weren’t too worried. He holds the third place all time scoring record for the school,.. not bad for a guy who makes his points only three at a time. They lined up, snapped the ball, and Payne kicked. I wish the cameras had been at the right angle to show the look on his face when he realized the kick was bad. The guy is so professional it must have been completely devastating to miss that simple kick. He was right in the middle of the field, 38 yards out… cake for Payne. Pain for Payne. Coach Crowton looked like he was going to cry. We turned off the TV and sat in silence for a few minutes then went to bed. Another loss, certainly, but we showed some serious chops last night against a highly ranked, usually high scoring team. We’ll get better, we’ll start to win again, I think. I haven’t had that much fun watching football since about 4 years ago when Crowton took over and we had a stellar season. Life is good, I guess, even though I have an illness.
