So I (Jeremy) thought it was important to do my first blog post on “our” blog before Max turned one. I was going to go on and on about how cute Max is and what he’s up to lately but I figured you get enough of that from Brittany :).
Instead I’m going to talk to you about the single greatest day in my life…errr the second greatest behind Max’s birth….errr the third greatest behind Max’s birth and my wedding day. Yeah, that’s it. I’m blogging about the third greatest day of my life. Oh, and a warning for the regular blog readers, even Brittany thought this post was long and boring so you may just want to come back next week once Brittany posts some pictures and Max statistics.
When we heard that BYU was going to go play Oklahoma in the new Cowboys stadium, I talked to my friend Caleb about getting tickets. We put in our order just minutes after they went on sale. A couple weeks before the game they announced that they were selling some Standing Room Only (SRO) tickets for about $30. Since our original tickets weren’t that great we sold them and made about $60 a ticket. So, at that point, our whole trip to Dallas was paid for.
Going into the game this was my thinking. If we lose by three scores or more we’ll hear the usual “Go back to Utah and quit crying about respect for the MWC.” If we lose by two scores it’s basically a wash. No harm done, no respect won. If we lose by one score, it’s basically a win for BYU and the MWC. I never really though we’d win the game (I know I’m a horrible, horrible person and fan).
We got to the stadium about four hours before kick-off. We had to wait around for two hours before they opened the doors. As you can see, we really got there quite early.
Since we bought SRO tickets we had to get straight to our “posts” to set up camp and stand wide to keep from getting squeezed in. Let me just say about that stadium, it is gorgeous. Kudos to Jerry Jones for dreaming this thing up and that’s hard for me to say since I hate the Cowboys. Despite all the cool technology, it didn’t go off completely without a hitch. The geek in me enjoyed this picture. Anyone who owns a Windows computer has likely seen this before.
As you can see in some of the pictures, the stadium was primarily full of the Crimson and Cream. Of the 75,000 fans I’d guess about 10,000 were BYU fans. Not a bad showing considering the game was 1200 miles from campus versus the 200 or so miles for the OU fans. I will say that those 65,000 OU fans were incredibly loud. But, when Bradford didn’t come out onto the field in the second half, you could have heard a pin drop. The fans were dead silent. It was really quite weird.
I won’t go into the details of the game but my voice was basically gone by the end of the first quarter. The whole time I kept saying to the guys that were with me, “I can’t believe we’re still in this game.” I wish I could say I had more faith in my Cougars, but considering the way they played the last two games of last season I was a bit skeptical.
After BYU scored the go-ahead touchdown I was pretty speechless. Part of that may have been that my voice was so trashed I couldn’t really talk. The picture below was snapped after we stopped jumping around screaming like five-year-olds. It was taken by a fellow BYU fan (which we managed to become like old pals with after BYU went ahead).
Once the game ended the BYU players rushed onto the field and started celebrating. They sort of congregated over in the corner where the majority of the BYU fans were and that’s where they did the Hakka. The third picture below is them doing the Hakka.
After the game we made our way around the stadium to get a good look at the big screen. We watched the game from the endzone so we didn’t get to watch the monster screen the whole game. My next major purchase is one of these for my bedroom…though I think I might have to knock out a couple walls to make it fit.
On the way home I kept saying that this is my “Miami” game. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my parents tell me about the time when BYU played Miami and won when BYU was ranked 2353rd and Miami was ranked #1 and BYU scored 200 points in the last 30 seconds to win…or something like that.
It was a great weekend and the best $30 I’ve ever spent. I bought a program before the game for $10 that couldn’t have cost more than 25 cents to print. Should BYU end the season strong I’m going to frame it and perhaps have it bronzed or something.
Here’s another picture of the stadium after the game. It really is a site to see. And by-the-way, the glass wall in the picture below can actually open all the way up. It takes about 9 minutes to open and is the largest opening glass door in the world…this according to my $10 program that I bought.
And, lest you feel like your time was completely wasted, here’s the obligatory Max picture taken in our hotel room in Dallas.
