Football Blues

I attended my very first football game ever. It was an exciting experience. It was BYU’s first home game of the season and, though it ended up an extremely disappointing game, in which I witnessed our team get slaughtered by Florida State, it will be an unforgettable memory…or more like a wound that won’t heal.
Before I pour on too much salt, I should explain that my goal in writing this, is not to focus on the technicalities of our loss or the reasons behind it so much as to discuss the effect of the loss on the BYU fans.
My Saturday evening started out with my brother and I both decked out in our BYU blue t-shirts to show our true blue support of BYU, and throwing a football back and forth in our pre-game warm up at my apartment complex. I must say I did fairly well for myself throwing fairly accurate and consistent and catching most of the throws that my brother sent my way. This lasted long enough for my throwing arm to become extremely numb and pained to the point of it dangling uselessly at my side (not too much different from Harry Potters experience, except that I still had my bones) at which time we decided we better head on up to the stadium.
We collected our sister and joined the massive sea of blue that was migrating toward our destination. From this experience I have now learned the accepted pedestrian etiquette of football game days. Meaning that red, green and yellow lights are all good and useful most of the time but suddenly don’t have much of an effect if the color blue is expansive enough. We came to a three way intersection, our first street crossing of the trek, and waited until signaled by the little white man, and the chirping bird that it was safe to cross. The mass started to move, and once started could not stop. Long gone were the little white man, the chirping bird, and even the red flashing hand, yet blue still clogged the intersection. It didn’t just fill in between the white painted crosswalk, it covered the entire intersection, people had long ago given up on the designated path and cut straight through the center of traffic. I think it took about 41 seconds off the time it took me to reach the stadium.
We filed down to our second row seats on the left corner of the end zone…amazing seats!! The pre-game hype was thick. The marching band entered the field along with the ROTC amidst happy cheers. Cosmo our beloved mascot entered decked out in his football uniform giving high-fives and thumbs up to the front row fans. The cheerleaders were already stationed at the sidelines pumped and ready to encourage the crowd with pompoms and megaphones. Then the ultimate eruption of cheers came as the football team came onto the field.
The cheers continued throughout the first quarter and into the second quarter of the game but then I noticed that the hype and positive natures began to dwindle as the gap between winner and loser continued to broaden and BYU continued to…lets just say, play poorly. I can completely understand how the crowd felt as they began to realize that BYU might just get crushed on our own field. I was one of the many, I became very disheartened and began to stand up less and less until I could only sit and watch in mostly silence (an occasional yell that dwindled down to an unearthly gargling). Let me say that I have always heard about how great the BYU student body fan club was, and I have even experienced the great crowd at basketball games but I never realized that they were also capable of the opposite extreme. By the middle of the third quarter there was a mass rush for the exits abandoning our poor team to live out their humiliation alone. Though I was disappointed by this rush, I was disgusted by the reactions of the crowd around me. I personally have never been a huge fan of booing the opposing teams/refs, whatever, but I am slightly more tolerant of it because it is seems to be a widely accepted ritual in sports. I generally prefer to give the opposing team a certain amount of respect regardless of winning or losing status but the crowd was being downright rude.
During the course of the game the opposing team would run their school flags up and down the end zone after each touchdown. During the first half of the game this resulted in general booing from the BYU fans but as we continued to get crushed by Florida State I noticed the crowd become more and more hostile. When one individual nearby me (I never located the person) began to yell “Run fatty, run!” to one of those that carried a flag, I wanted to cower in my seat as if I wasn’t there…actually I really wanted to jump across the wall of fans separating him from me and rip his head off (and I guarantee that I could have, even with one useless arm, if I had found him). This was far beyond the limit of appropriate rival banter. This had nothing to do with the football teams or the game, this was attacking a specific and individual person who has an identity, personality, and certain level of self esteem that would be affected.
Then the crowds anger even turned to the fellow students. By this time, any mistake that our football team made was met with jeers and insults from the crowd, certainly not motivating our team to work harder or do better. At the end of the game the events staff lined up across the end zones. As they walked on, people in the row in front of me began to mock them saying things like, “What are you going to do, keep us from rushing the field?” “Are you going to stop us?” These members of the event staff were students at BYU. They probably had some classes with those that were mocking them. They all took it well ignoring the negative comments or responding good naturedly.
By the end of the evening, though I was very disappointed by our loss, I was extremely peeved at all those that were sitting around me. I didn’t feel like it was a crowd worth a victory. Why waste good effort and skill for a crowd that showed no loyalty? Those fans didn’t have the ability to lose with grace and therefore also lacked the ability to triumph with grace.
With that I shall step down from my soap box. I did, for the most part, enjoy the overall experience of my first football game and I am looking forward to the next home game, (this coming Saturday) hopefully with a more positive outcome…and crowd.