With the exception of the Kevin Feterik years, I have started every BYU football season since ‘84 with the same hope: To go Undefeated and win a national championship. Then as soon as we lose a game I am grounded back in reality.
“Our neighbor brought over four sweet Dodger tickets and a parking pass for tonight’s game. I told him we would definitely use them.”
“What? (A look of disgust on my face.) Are you kidding? Do you remember we are playing #3 Oklahoma today? You think I’m going to the Dodger game?”
(Rangi Smart Rules of Negotioation #1: The more unanswerable questions you can ask, the stronger your argument becomes.)
“You better take those tickets back up the street and tell him to find somebody else.”
Never having been to a Dodger game, Sara really wanted to go and at one point said she would take the kids by herself if I didn’t want to go.
An hour or so went by and I started to soften. After all the BYU game started at 4:00 and the Dodger game not until 7:15, and let’s be realistic BYU was a 22.5 point underdog. My expectations were that the Cougars would probably be down 3 touchdowns at the half and the second half would be straight torture.
Of course any other night I would love taking my family to a paid Dodger game and I had never even used a prefered parking pass before at any athletic event. The fact that each ticket had a 50 dollar face value, might have influenced me as well.
But still could I short sale my hopes for a national championship before the Cougs had even taken the field?
On the other hand I would be a hero to Sara at least for the day if I agreed to go to the game.
Maybe I could have the best of both worlds, watch the first half of the BYU game and then when it was no longer a contest, please my wife by taking the family to a free Dodger game.
So that’s what I went with, and as I’m sure you know, the football Gods punished me for it.
I watched the first half in HD at a friends house, most of the 3rd quarter video streamed on my computer, and then I sweated out the 4th quarter with only phone updates after big plays. It was a terrible way to witness the biggest Cougar win of the last decade.
When I got the call that they missed the field goal we were walking into the game and I went a little crazy and threw some things around. Sara finally had to tell me to calm down because I looked like an abusive parent/husband.
5 comments:
For what it's worth, you made the right call. Although, the last several minutes of the BYU game were pretty amazing. We had friends over for dinner, you would have appreciated the prayer of gratitude given at dinner time by an ardent Y fan--total sacrilege I'm sure! Great post.
I am so impressed! Good Job, I am sure Sara is so proud. If Mama ain't happy ain't no body happy.
You couldn't trade seeing those smiling faces for a mere knock off of 3rd ranked Oklahoma by BYU. They are way too cute for that.
I;m with Cher on this one.. it may have felt like a bit of a sacrifice, but what a great pay off!! Way to go family guy!
Ha ha Rangi, you are so funny. And your family is so cute.
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