Utah State University

Growing up, it was a fall tradition in our house. My dad would put on his BYU hat, grab his radio and plop down in front of the TV. He liked to watch the game, but he liked Paul James, the radio commentator better than the Craig Bollerjack or whoever the TV commentator was. Shortly after kickoff, dad would start out slowly with a heavy sigh or a “Come on!”. The jeers slowly ratcheted up from there. As a child I was convinced Lavell Edwards was the stupidest man on the face of the earth and every ref was a vindictive, deceitful, BYU hating turd that was picked on incessantly as a youth and had grown up a shifty, resentful jerk who could see no better than Stevie Wonder.  Refs were useless and every play that Lavell called, my dad quickly labeled as the most ridiculous and asinine blunder since Custer strolled onto the battlefield at Little Big Horn. Everyone on the field was simply a huge conglomeration of blubbering buffoons who couldn’t pick a football out of a line up of sticks and garden vegetables. Every game was thee single most frustrating and aggravating ordeal the old man had witnessed. About the moment he would lunge forward at the TV and blurt out “Lavell, what the hell are you doing? Oh come on ref! Geez! No! No! No! NOOO!” I would slink out of the room for fear some of that frustration would be directed at me. Besides, who wants to see a group of nit-wit dopes smash around on a field when an otherwise perfectly good Saturday was wasting away. I never really felt like I needed a huge source of frustration in my life, so I never gave much interest to the sport. So, it is ironic that a BYU game would probably be the most life altering event in my life.

My brother Shawn was attending USU and he invited me and dad up to watch the USU/BYU football game. It was the day before Halloween, 1993. For anyone that is a USU fan, you know where I am going with this. USU has a solid record in football. They consistently lose year after year after year. BYU almost always does well enough to be ranked in the top 25.  When BYU plays USU it is almost always a sad day for USU. I didn’t know any of this. I barely knew where Logan was. Shawn got us into the game and brought us to the USU student section. He kept leading us further down into the belly of the stadium, until we reached the second row on the fifty yard line. Dad was sure to be on his best behavior stuck in front of 50 or so drunk frat dudes who hated BYU only slightly less than they hated an empty keg.

The game got underway and the one thing I didn’t like about watching a live game, without the commentators telling me what was going on, I almost had no clue, what was going on. I get the quarterback, the running backs and the receivers. but then there’s this whole other mess of guys doing stuff and apparently doing things wrong that caused penalties. Without the benefit of the aerial camera views, I just watched the ball. Whenever someone made the ball go into the end zone, I know a score was made. That’s not to say I was bored or confused.

Being that close to the USU football players, you could plainly hear the words you thought you saw them say on TV. I will simply say that the USU players were displeased that the BYU players were alive, and they expressed a desire to remedy that situation. This was certainly entertaining to watch. Being in front of the entire student section I also had the luxury of hearing their cheers. That too was entertaining. Then I noticed the USU mascot Big Blue. I first took note of him when he climbed up one of the light poles and began shaking the whole thing violently back and forth. Security and police stood at the bottom of the pole ordering him down before he hurt himself or someone else. He climbed down and disappeared. Then I saw him sledding down the stairs.  Then he was crowd surfing. Then he was darting over to the BYU side. There was no way this wasn’t going to be simply awesome. And it was. He ran up behind the BYU cheerleaders, grabbed one of them, tossed her over his shoulder and ran back to the USU side while she kicked and screamed. The BYU mascot wasn’t going to watch an abduction without  trying to do something. He gave chase. When he caught up to Blue, Blue let the cheerleader go, grabbed his own tail and held it out like a sword and began sword fighting. I was more than entertained. My eyes were opened to the exciting world of truly great mascots. Something I never knew existed.

With every touchdown USU made, they shot off a cannon and the crowd ritualistically proceeded through a series of cheers and claps and yells. This game was turning out to be truly awesome. The game continued. The crowd got more vocal.  The players in front of me became more energetic. by the end of the game, the entire stadium was searing. I had never been to a game where the crowd melted together into a unified mass. It was like watching a scripted riot where every person knew their part. and I was in the middle of it. I actually felt sorry for the BYU players and the fans. Like they had unwittingly wandered down the wrong darkened alley and were now surrounded by a mob with itchy club fists. I could literally see the fear in their eyes when the crowd jeered them. I imagined they kept one eye on the time on the Minutes Remaining clock and the other eye on the exit portal. When the game was over, I was sure they were going to sprint out of the stadium, race on the bus and scream at the bus driver frantically “GO! They’re coming after us!”
The game ended. The score - BYU 56, USU 58. BYU sprinted off the field and the USU band erupted with three long blasts of their horns that sounded like The Horn of Gondor.  Then everyone burst into some song about Scotsman, thistles, something about blue, something something something, where the sage brush grows... and then they growled out some other song “ Something something something...Utah state, hey aggies all the way, go aggies, go aggies, hey, hey, hey!” and with one single motion, everyone poured onto the field. We slowly swam upstream and picked our way out of the stadium.  Before we left I watched the pulsing crowd pull down one of the goal posts. I was completely marvelled. “So THIS is Logan?” I thought to myself, as a smile crept across my face. “This place rules!” (This was in 2010, but it gives you a good idea of the reaction) 




Dad went home and left me with Shawn. I am sure he cried and cursed out that good for nothing Lavell all the way home. Shawn took me to eat at A&W. “You gotta get the Big Blue” he said with a wide grin. I ordered the Big Blue. They brought me out a burger the size of my head with three huge patties. Cheese dividing each layer of meat and smothered in slap-your-momma good fry sauce. The burger was balanced tediously on a huge mound of fries and it came with root beer float served in a chilled, frosty mug. Each bite, the juices ran down my arms and dripped onto the fries. Logan was quickly becoming my most favorite place on earth.

Afterwards, Shawn took me up to a cave in the canyon where we went spelunking. One of the most gorgeous things I have ever seen. at some points we were wading through standing water. Other times we were looking up at crevasses that extended hundreds of feet above us beyond the reach of our head;amps. And other times we were crawling through holes that were just barely larger than my chest.

I went home wondering how I had never heard of Logan where they obviously knew how to have a good time, knew how to eat and had spectacular recreation opportunities within arms reach in any direction. I would have to be as thick headed as Lavelle to not go to school at USU. And so I did. No idea where I would have ended up had I not gone to that game. I suppose I would be living in a van down by the river.