I've often wondered what it is about sports that gets us (who choose to) so riled, so emotionally involved, so proud/angry over something that is, as we who participated in youth athletics were all told at one time or another, "just a game". This weekend is as good a time as any for myself to contemplate this. Rivalry week just wound up here on the Wasatch Front, when my beloved University of Utah Utes football team blew a lead for the second year in a row with under two minutes left to lose to the hated Cougars of Brigham Young University. First, a bit on the rivalry.
If you didn't grow up in the Beehive State, it's difficult to fully comprehend the depths to which this football game plunges. I would argue it's one of the best in the country. (By best I also mean worst; I mean fans acting without reason or any notion of maturity. As I'm writing this sentence, there is a news story on KSL-5 about a Ute fan who was head-butted by a Cougar fan at the game, breaking his nose.) The Utah-BYU rivalry has all the characteristics of other big rivalries in college football (usually based on in-state or geographic connection, ivy league snobbery or armed forces branches) except, just to make it even more interesting, it has become known as a religious rivalry. Some see it as the Mormons against the ubiquitous "non-members", though among us fans who are able to reconcile being a Ute fan and LDS, I would say it's generally characterized as the "regular" Mormons (Utah fans) against the "weird" Mormons (Cougar fans). That streak of religiosity, however falsely perceived, gives the game a zest of fundamentalism (on both sides) rarely seen in this country, with the exception of outside abortion clinics in the South - or in the halls of the White House.
Growing up, I was plagued by a perpetually terrible Utah football team, which meant mockery from neighbors, who also carried about a holier-than-thou attitude about choosing to root for "the Lord's school" rather than those heathens at the U. This was in the midst of Lavell Edwards' greatness, but luckily for me, the playing field began to even itself in the early nineties. Utah football improved drastically, with the pinnacle coming in 2004, and a rivalry with question as to who would win was reborn for my formative years.
Yesterday I made a trip to Provo with my brother for the annual throwdown, the third time I would witness it in Happy Valley. The first was in 1995 - the Utes won, I sat in the Couga
r Club section, and a middle-aged Zoobie who was sitting a row behind smacked my friend Nate in the back of the head after we stood up to cheer for a Utah play, claiming that we "didn't know anything about the world". I'm still not sure what he meant by that, but Nate had the last laugh when he replied, "At least I know it's immature for an adult to hit a kid." Oh, and Utah won that year.
My second trip was ten years later, in 2005. I wasn't eager to go down - the Utes had just lost their starting quarterback, the season was feeling like a letdown after the literally perfect 2004 campaign and I didn't want to sit among 60,000 blue-clad freaks for four hours. I decided to go mainly as a chance to visit Megan, Tanner and Jason, who were students down there and I didn't see very often. Jason and Tanner were good men, though - Ute fans through and through. Megan and I were lucky enough to have a friendship based on a hatred of math and a love of literature, therefore I was able to look beyond her school affiliation. Jason and I used to go to Ute games together in high school, and we got to sit together among the red-wearing faithful in the western part of the north end zone. Oh, and Utah proved victorious in overtime. It was probably the best all-out football game I've ever been to.
I had high hopes for yesterday. After an extremely disappointing 1-3 start (and an open-letter blog I wrote but never posted after a 27-0 loss to UNLV), the Runnin' Utes were playing their best football in two or three years - the defense was especially amazing. And BYU was, well, BYU. Just ask any Ute fan, BYU always sucks. It was a very good game - very defense oriented, but Utah couldn't get their offense going to compliment the exemplary "D" being thrown down by Robert Johnson, Steve Tate, Stevenson Sylvester and the rest of the crew.
Then, with a minute and forty seconds left, Utah orchestrated a touchdown drive to take a 10-9 lead. BYU got the ball back and three plays later (including one sack by Sylvester), they were looking at 4th down and 18 yards to go deep in their own territory. This was it. I was elated -- laughing, smiling, hugging my brother, touching hands with other Utah fans interspersed among the Cougar faithful around me. We were jubilant. Then, in one play, it all went bad. Brice McCain blew coverage on Austin Collie, while Max Hall escaped another sack and threw a fifty-yard bomb to Collie for the first down. My heart sunk. I was devastated. My heart was broken. My faith was suddenly doused in caffeine-free Diet Coke and stomped on by metal-spiked cleats. It was only a couple of questionable calls and an eleven-yard run later that the Team Down South sealed their victory. My week was ruined.
So why did I allow this to happen? Why did I invest so much emotion, so much faith, so much purported happiness in a freakin' football game?
I think it all goes to the same reason I reach for religion -- I want to feel part of something bigger than myself, something communal, where we, the like-minded, can all dress up similarly, pass signs and physical contact among each other in our celebration and mourning. In this we hope that we might find reason among, and make sense of, all the madness in the world, all the events that are absolutely beyond our control. We are united in one common purpose. In sports, we clap and cheer, in religion we clasp our hands and bow our heads.
I'm glad I went to the game yesterday, even though we lost and I was surrounded by people in blue who represented something I don't understand or think is quite right, we were all reaching for personal fulfillment through something greater than ourselves.
Whew. Got that one off my brain. Now, here's a little playlist for the ears. I just kind of browed my music collection on the old computator and picked some songs that seemed to fit for me, here and now. It begins with a Glass solo piano work (who could ever argue against Philip Glass?!), followed by the bizzarely beautiful cut-n-paste sounds of Animal Collective. If you haven't heard them, check these guys out. Animal Collective is what happens when you put Brian Wilson in the washing machine with a Super Nintendo, the Information Age and sea water. Following is
Trent Reznor's soft-loud-soft-loud "The Day the World Went Away." I've loved this song since high school, when I bought the single. The song highlights some reasons why Reznor is a great producer. Medeski, Martin and Wood, the best damn avant-jazz-funk combo around. Whenever they come to Utah, it is with a jazz festival and the stuffy, upper-crust, old-school, donating-members jazz types are pushed out of the way by the young folks dancing to MMW's infectious grooves. It's a funny sight. Then we have Humanity's Best Candidate for Elf, Joanna Newsom's closer from The Milk-Eyed Mender. I love how her voice takes precedence on this song and the delicate picking of the harp rather than grand, dramatic swoops. Closing out the mix is everyone's favorite orchestral rockers, the Canadian Marxist musical collective, Godspeed You Black Emporer! with their glorious, epic (when are they not glorious or epic, though?) opener to their masterpiece, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, "Storm".
Enjoy.
Philip Glass - Metamorphosis One
Animal Collective - Unsolved Mysteries
Nine Inch Nails - The Day The World Went Away
Medeski, Martin and Wood - Take Me Nowhere
Joanna Newsom - Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
Godspeed You Black Emporer! - Storm
If you didn't grow up in the Beehive State, it's difficult to fully comprehend the depths to which this football game plunges. I would argue it's one of the best in the country. (By best I also mean worst; I mean fans acting without reason or any notion of maturity. As I'm writing this sentence, there is a news story on KSL-5 about a Ute fan who was head-butted by a Cougar fan at the game, breaking his nose.) The Utah-BYU rivalry has all the characteristics of other big rivalries in college football (usually based on in-state or geographic connection, ivy league snobbery or armed forces branches) except, just to make it even more interesting, it has become known as a religious rivalry. Some see it as the Mormons against the ubiquitous "non-members", though among us fans who are able to reconcile being a Ute fan and LDS, I would say it's generally characterized as the "regular" Mormons (Utah fans) against the "weird" Mormons (Cougar fans). That streak of religiosity, however falsely perceived, gives the game a zest of fundamentalism (on both sides) rarely seen in this country, with the exception of outside abortion clinics in the South - or in the halls of the White House.
Growing up, I was plagued by a perpetually terrible Utah football team, which meant mockery from neighbors, who also carried about a holier-than-thou attitude about choosing to root for "the Lord's school" rather than those heathens at the U. This was in the midst of Lavell Edwards' greatness, but luckily for me, the playing field began to even itself in the early nineties. Utah football improved drastically, with the pinnacle coming in 2004, and a rivalry with question as to who would win was reborn for my formative years.
Yesterday I made a trip to Provo with my brother for the annual throwdown, the third time I would witness it in Happy Valley. The first was in 1995 - the Utes won, I sat in the Couga
r Club section, and a middle-aged Zoobie who was sitting a row behind smacked my friend Nate in the back of the head after we stood up to cheer for a Utah play, claiming that we "didn't know anything about the world". I'm still not sure what he meant by that, but Nate had the last laugh when he replied, "At least I know it's immature for an adult to hit a kid." Oh, and Utah won that year.My second trip was ten years later, in 2005. I wasn't eager to go down - the Utes had just lost their starting quarterback, the season was feeling like a letdown after the literally perfect 2004 campaign and I didn't want to sit among 60,000 blue-clad freaks for four hours. I decided to go mainly as a chance to visit Megan, Tanner and Jason, who were students down there and I didn't see very often. Jason and Tanner were good men, though - Ute fans through and through. Megan and I were lucky enough to have a friendship based on a hatred of math and a love of literature, therefore I was able to look beyond her school affiliation. Jason and I used to go to Ute games together in high school, and we got to sit together among the red-wearing faithful in the western part of the north end zone. Oh, and Utah proved victorious in overtime. It was probably the best all-out football game I've ever been to.
I had high hopes for yesterday. After an extremely disappointing 1-3 start (and an open-letter blog I wrote but never posted after a 27-0 loss to UNLV), the Runnin' Utes were playing their best football in two or three years - the defense was especially amazing. And BYU was, well, BYU. Just ask any Ute fan, BYU always sucks. It was a very good game - very defense oriented, but Utah couldn't get their offense going to compliment the exemplary "D" being thrown down by Robert Johnson, Steve Tate, Stevenson Sylvester and the rest of the crew.
Then, with a minute and forty seconds left, Utah orchestrated a touchdown drive to take a 10-9 lead. BYU got the ball back and three plays later (including one sack by Sylvester), they were looking at 4th down and 18 yards to go deep in their own territory. This was it. I was elated -- laughing, smiling, hugging my brother, touching hands with other Utah fans interspersed among the Cougar faithful around me. We were jubilant. Then, in one play, it all went bad. Brice McCain blew coverage on Austin Collie, while Max Hall escaped another sack and threw a fifty-yard bomb to Collie for the first down. My heart sunk. I was devastated. My heart was broken. My faith was suddenly doused in caffeine-free Diet Coke and stomped on by metal-spiked cleats. It was only a couple of questionable calls and an eleven-yard run later that the Team Down South sealed their victory. My week was ruined.
So why did I allow this to happen? Why did I invest so much emotion, so much faith, so much purported happiness in a freakin' football game?
I think it all goes to the same reason I reach for religion -- I want to feel part of something bigger than myself, something communal, where we, the like-minded, can all dress up similarly, pass signs and physical contact among each other in our celebration and mourning. In this we hope that we might find reason among, and make sense of, all the madness in the world, all the events that are absolutely beyond our control. We are united in one common purpose. In sports, we clap and cheer, in religion we clasp our hands and bow our heads.
I'm glad I went to the game yesterday, even though we lost and I was surrounded by people in blue who represented something I don't understand or think is quite right, we were all reaching for personal fulfillment through something greater than ourselves.
Whew. Got that one off my brain. Now, here's a little playlist for the ears. I just kind of browed my music collection on the old computator and picked some songs that seemed to fit for me, here and now. It begins with a Glass solo piano work (who could ever argue against Philip Glass?!), followed by the bizzarely beautiful cut-n-paste sounds of Animal Collective. If you haven't heard them, check these guys out. Animal Collective is what happens when you put Brian Wilson in the washing machine with a Super Nintendo, the Information Age and sea water. Following is
Trent Reznor's soft-loud-soft-loud "The Day the World Went Away." I've loved this song since high school, when I bought the single. The song highlights some reasons why Reznor is a great producer. Medeski, Martin and Wood, the best damn avant-jazz-funk combo around. Whenever they come to Utah, it is with a jazz festival and the stuffy, upper-crust, old-school, donating-members jazz types are pushed out of the way by the young folks dancing to MMW's infectious grooves. It's a funny sight. Then we have Humanity's Best Candidate for Elf, Joanna Newsom's closer from The Milk-Eyed Mender. I love how her voice takes precedence on this song and the delicate picking of the harp rather than grand, dramatic swoops. Closing out the mix is everyone's favorite orchestral rockers, the Canadian Marxist musical collective, Godspeed You Black Emporer! with their glorious, epic (when are they not glorious or epic, though?) opener to their masterpiece, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, "Storm".Enjoy.
Philip Glass - Metamorphosis One
Animal Collective - Unsolved Mysteries
Nine Inch Nails - The Day The World Went Away
Medeski, Martin and Wood - Take Me Nowhere
Joanna Newsom - Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
Godspeed You Black Emporer! - Storm
