True Colors

Why must there be winners and losers?

So this post requires a little background.  It all started in the Fall of 2008 when Jon and I met and fell in love.  We knew from the beginning that Jon had attended the U and that I had attended the Y, but at this point in our relationship I don't think I yet knew how deeply our allegiance to our respective schools ran.  Jon must have known because he proposed to me the night before the big rivalry game that year, knowing that at the end of the football game the following day one of us would be happy and one of us would not.  The game was at Rice Eccles Stadium that year and I was a pansy and chose to blend in rather than sport my BYU attire.  Silly Becca.  I'd gone to all the other U of U games that season and cheered for them without any issue.  I suppose I thought I'd be alright regardless of the outcome, but as it became clear that the cougars were not going to come out on top I became increasingly quiet and slightly miserable.  They say that misery loves company and I can promise you that in that crowd I felt all alone.  It was then that I knew just what kind of a fan I was.  So sad at the loss, and slightly disgusted at myself for caring so much.  Perhaps knowing that we were getting married and that football really isn't that big of a deal made it a little easier to accept defeat, but only a little.

The following year we were visiting Lizzie and her family in New York for Thanksgiving.  That meant missing out on listening to the game because we were flying back home while they played.  After we landed Jon discovered a voicemail from my family singing the Cougar fight song.  BYU had won!  The victory should have been sweeter than it was, but I felt a bit bad for Jon, imagining how I would deal with a message on my phone of family singing the Utah Man song.  Not cool.  Once again, I was a little relieved for the game to have come and gone and not worry about it for another year.

I won't go into the details of each year, but just to further illustrate how sensitive we are to this rivalry I think I should mention that two years ago I was listening to Greg Rubel upstairs while Jon listened to the Utah announcer downstairs.  Apparently Rubel is over the top biased towards BYU.  True, but this year we discovered that it's the same with Utah.  The point is that we couldn't even listen to the game in the same room!!  I remember Abby telling me that we were going to mess up our children.  Didn't we realize that this was like religion?  And that exposing our kids to one Utah parent and one BYU parent might have some serious repercussions.  I loved Jon's response.  "We'll just have to have Aggies!"  Or they could go to Weber.  Red and blue makes purple.  Anyway, I suppose time will tell which team they ultimately choose...

Until then, we'll just try to give them equal team time in what they wear until they can choose for themselves.  Which is what we did Saturday.  Half the day Lyds sported her Cougar tennis outfit while Sophie wore her Utah cheer leading attire.  Then they switched to the other team for the remainder of the day.  Clearly this decision was not made by our girls, but was done for their parents benefit.  Haha!  We are a little ridiculous!  I tried to be a gracious loser, and I think I did alright, and Jon was a champ of a winner, but during the game it became even more clear that this hope of having our team win affects us much to much.  Jon found himself shaking as he listened to the final minutes, and I was so grateful for the sad texts passing between my sisters because I felt less alone in my loss.  Perhaps this two year break from the rivalry game has come at the perfect time.  Hopefully we can chill out enough in the next two years and maybe not be so affected by a win or a loss.  Because someone always wins and that means someone is always going to lose.  That's just the way it is!