Game Day

When I was growing up, my family always had season tickets to BYU football games.

Autumn Saturdays were often spent cleaning the house and then getting ready for the football game in Provo.  Having little kids, my parents knew they wouldn’t be able to keep us happy confined to our seats for much longer than necessary, so we never got there early.  This meant we had to park blocks away.  We’d get out of the car before the stadium was even in sight.  We’d walk hand-in-hand toting our seat pads, our coolers, our mini custom flags, which gave us away as obvious BYU fans.  The walk seemed to take forever, but I knew we were close when I could finally see the big flags that flew above the home of the Cougars.

As a child my attention was averted by anything and everything in the stadium.  I spent very little time watching the game.   Like an enormous game of Where’s Waldo, with a million different stories all going on in one location, I took it upon myself to identify every vignette I could find: the team on the sidelines, the crowd in the stands, the people up in the press boxes, the referees running up and down the field, and the cheer and yell leaders who would run around the field with the big flag with the enormous Y on it whenever BYU scored any points.  I recently learned that Colonial Flags makes those custom flags, and that to be the player who carries it when the team takes the field is quiet an honor.