Touchbacks and Safeties

This past week, we have had the opportunity to attend both a BYU Football Game (Go Cougars - insert cougar noise here) and a Jazz game. I love going to sporting events. Even if you don't have as good as view as sitting on your couch and you might not be able to see the instant replay from four or five different angles, there is just a feeling that exists when you are in person witnessing a sporting event. Take the BYU games that I have been to this year. The first two, the weather was less than ideal, and the third was a sell-out crowd, and being the big guy that I am, it doesn't exactly mean that I am going to be very comfortable for the three hours that I will be at the game. But none of that seems to matter when you see Bryan Kehl intercept a pass and then proceed to make the opponents look like fools because they simply cannot tackle him. When something huge happens in one of these sporting events, you suddenly forget that you are crammed in the seats like sardines. You forget that you might be in a blizzard or the fact that you lost feeling in your toes ten minutes ago. The thrill of the game, the screaming crowd, and a winning team takes all of that away.

When you aren't at the game, you also don't get to see the mascots. In high school, mascots were more just an annoyance. I remember going to a couple of high school football games where our school mascot thought the best thing to do would be to try and run up and down the rows of the overcrowded bleachers. But at the college or professional level things are much more entertaining. The Jazz's mascot tonight spent five minutes walking around spraying people with a fire extinguisher. It was highly entertaining.

Apart from all of this, there is something else that you simply won't have when experiencing the game from the comfort of your home. You will not have the fans. I am not talking about the fans that cheer or clap at the correct times, I am talking about the ones that even though their bodies are at the games, their minds must be in a different place, because the things that come out of their mouths really astonish me at times. Their is always the "know-it-all" that tries to be the fountain of knowledge for those sitting within earshot of his voice, yet more times than not ends up stating incorrect information, and making a fool of himself. I don't know about the rest of you, but if I don't know about a certain subject of conversation, I don't make an attempt to be the "expert" of the moment. Then you have the "referee". You know who I am talking about, the one who seems to think that from their vantage point, perched in the upper bowl, they had a better view of the call than the man in striped shirt that was standing five feet from the call. Then you have the fans that get a laugh when they shout something out, so they find it necessary to shout the same thing, over and over looking for the same response. Alot of times, even the first time, we weren't laughing with you, we were laughing at you. "UTAH... JAZZ...UTAH...JAZZ, AHH THANK YOU, GIVE YOURSELF A ROUND OF APPLAUSE!"

Given all of these things, I still love going to sporting events and hope that over the years to come, I will only go to more. I love the energy, I love the feeling you get when you can say that you were there for that big play, the legendary one that will be talked about for years to come. So let's hear what you remember. What are some legendary sporting events that you remember?