I work for a fortune 500 company nestled in the lovely hills of Draper–which due to it’s location has a pretty even split of Utah and BYU fans. Today at work was something else. The Utah fans are all extremely happy, and most have become extroverts in “all things” football. Even the transplant from Baltimore, Maryland–with no ties to Utah Football–was brimming with enthusiasm and positive energy for the Utes (of course, this is easy when your hometown college is the University of Maryland). Other co-workers were humming “Utah Man” and with emphatic body language explaining the “Fake Punt,” the “Booker Lefty,” and the “Hackett Sprint” it was like we’d won the Super Bowl.
Somewhere in the midst of this super-nova of excitement, however, was the much maligned cougar-fan base, in all its ignominious glory, like a dying star, fading further and further into the distance. Look, I take no pride in seeing a man sift through his work load like he’d come back from an afternoon lobotomy. I know that feeling myself, and it’s called misery. It’s the ASU losses in 13’and 14′–The Colorado loss in 11′ the TCU loss in 10′. I empathize with the cougar fan who came into work after witnessing history twice on one Saturday in late September–the shut out in the Big House, and the offensive masterpiece orchestrated by Maestros Harding and Roderick and performed by the 65 man Utah travelling squad, on some team called the Oregon Ducks. But, today the Utah fans seemed to find no problem expressing their enjoyment to their BYU cohorts. It was like Christmas morning where one child gets the present they wanted all year long and whose parents sadly expressed all along that said item was out of the family budget–but they get it anyway as a surprise, and the other gets the frumpy pair of jeans that was on sale at KOHLS.
Being the enlightened (read: conniving) person that I am, I tried to offer some condolences, mainly in the fact the Michigan also gave our run game fits, even temporarily knocking out the power in residential “Sack” Lake City. I reminded them how Michigan is a tough team on the road for any team not named the Utah Utes> I reassured them that many teams have gone into Ann Arbor, and left neutered and with a nasty scar. Enough with my ridiculous analogies–time to get to the point… What was it like at your office? How were the “inter-office” interactions for you guys? Hopefully it was as good for you as it was for me.
I have two uber-zoobs who sit near me and had to spend a portion of yesterday listening to them complain about the referees being completely one-sided and the standard “if we play that game 10 times, we win X of them” arguments as well. I made the mistake of trying to interact with them, even went so far as to show that both teams had the same number of penalties called on them (5) for very close to the same yardage (-45 for TDS; -53 for UofM). So that just got the “one-sided” refs comment changed to “they weren’t calling anything”.
They also tried to turn the tables on our conversation by stating how down the Pac-12 obviously is since Oregon definitely doesn’t deserve to be ranked, thus our ranking is inflated by a win over them (ala 1984?) and the top team (i.e. UCLA) barely survived against them. I wasn’t sure if they realized how both of those comments were an insult to their own team.
Then my cell rang, and my ring tone is Utah Man. They both rolled their eyes and walked back to their desks. Neither have spoken a word yet today.
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