My day as a BYU football game day event staff member

BYU football didn’t quite look like fans hoped in their opener against Portland State. My unique, ground-level view of the fans and the game.

BYU football was finally here. The sun hammered Lavell Edwards Stadium, set to bake on a steady 90+ degrees.

Fan streamed in Gate 7. They toted bags, bottles, seat cushions, and expectations for 2017. There were old men, kids, Viking fans in green (complete with horned helms and plastic polearms), and mothers with kids on arms, shoulders, hips, trailing along behind, and on the way. 

They smiled and chatted and thanked me to the steady ping of the scanner reading their tickets. And when they weren’t hammered by solar rays,  they looked full of vigor for a new season.

Between the heat and the showing by the team, by halftime, some of that fire was dampened. They retreated in droves to the shaded grass just outside the stadium. I watched them all, smiling politely, scanner in hand.

Working for my fun

Some backstory for this adventure.

For the first time since 2007, I found myself without tickets to the BYU football opener. I was content to settle in front of my big screen at home. I’d let the good folks at ESPN give me my first taste of Cougar goodness in air-conditioned comfort.

But then fate stepped in. A chance to get in for gameday… but as Special Events Staff. 

How does a 31-year-old man with a day job and a mortgage suddenly get thrown into a student job?

Well, mostly it was due to a lack of students.

Desperate times

Hundreds of staff and personnel are required for each and every BYU football home game. The majority of them come from the ranks of the plucky young people still enmeshed in classes at Brigham Young University.

But this year, late in the process, the Cougars added Portland State on what they call Week 0, August 26th. You know, before students have actually come to campus.

So this left Events with a whole lot of LES to cover, and no bodies to do it with. They must have felt pretty desperate.

Out went the call to BYU faculty and staff (of whom my wife happens to be one) to aid the university in their time of need. So what could I do, loyal fan that I am, but respond to the call to arms.

Also, they bribed us with San Jose State game tickets.

That’s how I came to watch the first half from the north jumbotron. Between twisting my wrist into odd angles to line the scanner up with proffered tickets (why the heck did they attach the lanyard on the same side as the scanner reader?), and pointing out where bathrooms and victuals might be found, I caught Neal Pau’u’s juking, stumbling, diving touchdown to kick off the season.

Blue and white balloons were unleashed overhead, the canon fired, and we figured that after a slow start, the Cougars would start to get things into gear.

Only it didn’t go down that way.

A slow start for the Cougars

After another nice BYU drive, keyed by a deep ball to Talon Shumway and punctuated by a Squally Canada touchdown, the Portland State Vikings answered. They tore up the Cougars’ highly anticipated defence on the ground and in the air. That they missed the PAT only seemed to make the situation seem more dire.

This FCS team had just pulled within a score of BYU football.

Now, the Vikings didn’t see the inside of the endzone again that game. But neither did the Cougars. Even after several excellent opportunities, a couple in the redzone.

Mistakes, penalties, and receivers struggling to break the press and get open (despite ample protection from the O-line) birthed a sputtering, field-goal-kicking offense.

The Cougars never pulled far enough away to give their depth much needed experience.

Don’t throw out your season tickets yet

Once the final seconds ticked away, and the 20-6 scoreline went in the books, fans filed out the gates for home. There was no excited buzz, no shouts and celebrations. The Blue and White faithful just marched to their cars, nonplussed. Whatever energy they might have had was zapped away by the blaring sun.

It was a win, but it wasn’t that fun. Not with LSU waiting next week.

But this is no time to panic. This week’s struggle may still be the tuneup BYU football needs to find itself.

They might just have to endure some work, some harsh sun and wrist-contorting and long days to get where they need to be. Like the venue of their next game, the outcome of the season is still up in the air for BYU football.

But come sun or rain, I’ll be there wherever it lands. Hopefully without that ticket scanner this time.

I can still hear that ping, ping, ping when I close my eyes at night.