Here at BYU, we are very proud of the fact that we have the Most Hated Football Team in the Country. The players have worked long and hard to earn that title, and you can imagine their joy when it was finally bestowed upon them by a Sports Illustrated writer with the last name “Looney,” who has since, I understand, mysteriously disappeared.
When the Cougars recently played at home against the Utah State Acnes, I was unable to attend because 1) I didn’t have any money, and 2) I hate football. Well, I shouldn’t say I hate it, even though I do, but I don’t care much for it. I think this stems from the fact that I don’t understand it. I went to all of my high school football team’s games my senior year, because I had to cover them for the school newspaper, and I would take intricate notes on who threw the ball and who caught it and who scored points and how many times they patted each other on the rear end (as many as 973 times per game, by the way) and what-not, but I never once actually understood what was going on. In order to write my stories for the newspaper, I had to look in the local paper the day after the game and borrow liberally from what their reporter had to say. The weeks when the local newspaper didn’t cover the games were the weeks when I told my editor I couldn’t, either. With those kinds of ethics, I think I’ll go far in journalism
Anyway, I probably would have gone to the BYU/Utah State game anyway, to support my school and all that garbage, but as I mentioned, I didn’t have any money. So I stayed back home at Deseret Towers (the Waldorf-Astoria of BYU) during the game, trying to keep myself entertained. It wasn’t very easy. Deseret Towers isn’t exactly a swingin’, happenin’ place normally, but it’s particularly uninteresting when everyone else who lives there is over at the game. So I sat around my room for a while, studying for my Communications mid-term,
(I would like to point out, for the record, that Communications 101, taught by Dr. Brad Hainsworth, Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., is by far the most enjoyable, least absurd class I have ever taken, and I think the professor has a particularly distinguished-sounding name)
but that got boring after about twelve seconds, so I went down to the Cougar Cove to get some ice cream. The game was being played on the radio at the Cougar Cove, and the employees were all sitting around listening to it, earning their minimum wage as best they could under the circumstances. I feigned interest in who was winning (BYU, oddly enough), got my ice cream, went back to my room, and called my mom. She refused to send me anymore money, though, so I quickly ended the conversation and got back to my ice cream.
BYU eventually won the game, all my friends came back, and we went to see a midnight showing of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at the University Mall. That alone made up for the boredom I had experienced earlier in the evening, especially the part where the two guys are fighting, and one of them keeps getting his limbs hacked off with the other guy’s sword, until it’s just his head sitting there on the ground. That always cracks me up.
(Eric D. Snider is a freshman at BYU. He lives in Deseret Towers, on the fourth floor of Q-Hall, and is originally from Lake Elsinore, California, where he also liked Monty Python far more than football.)