Week One, Pt 1: The Holy War
"Well, we invited the fat girl to the party to get all of her hot friends here, and now she's coming all alone."
That's the text I received from my friend George in June 2010, when after a week of speculation it was confirmed that the University of Texas and a group of 4 other schools, would not be joining the Pac-10, but rather sticking with the Big 12 after Texas-centric executives pulled all the strings they could to deliver the Longhorns everything they ever wanted. The "fat girl" George was referring to was the University of Colorado, who was among the group of 6 schools that the Pac-10 invited to join the powerful west coast conference and create the nation's first superconference. Colorado essentially accepted this invitation on the spot, and within a matter of days, it was announced that Colorado would be joining the Pac-10 with the expectation that Texas, Texas A & M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State would quickly follow suit. However, as George so eloquently summarized, Texas and the rest of her hot friends bailed on the Pac-16 party at the last moment.
So after being left at the altar by Texas and her bridesmaids, the Pac-10 was left to scramble to pick-up a 12th school so the conference at the very least would be able to establish the oft-irrelevant cash cow of a football conference championship game. With few places to turn, the Pac-10 made a quick decision to pull the trigger and invite the University of Utah to join the conference and create the Pac-12. Being lost to the college football neverland of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) and later, the Mountain West Conference, Utah did not flinch at its opportunity to join the big-time, and after a wild week of backroom talks and selective media leaks, the Pac-10 was now the Pac-12 with the addition of Colorado and Utah.
After my trip to Salt Lake City, I'm starting to think that Texas' rejection may have been one of the greatest things to ever happen to the Pac-12, because without Texas' rejection, Utah never joins the Pac. If Colorado is the fat girl at the party, Utah is someone's random cousin who nobody knew much about before the night began, but ended up being way more attractive and fun than anyone could have imagined - an absolute winner.
Salt Lake City, UT - Holy War
In my quest for savoring the ultimate fan experience at each Pac-12 school, I will be attending most games with passionate alums of each respective school who can show me the ins and outs of each gameday, but the fact of the matter is I'm not sure I have any Utah alums as even a 3rd degree LinkedIn connection, nevertheless someone at the level of a relationship where it would be appropriate to do something as intimate as tailgate together. So thus, the first stop of 13 Saturdays was a solo mission.
One of the greatest aspects of the University of Utah is that it is right in Salt Lake City. You can get to the school and picturesque on-campus stadium via Trax, Utah's light rail system, which just so happens to be free on Ute gamedays (at least Football, Basketball, and Gymnastics - which I've learned is taken VERY seriously at "the U"). So if you're meeting friends who already have your tailgate spot set, just grab your cooler, games, and whatever else you need, and hop on the Trax straight to your tailgate. Although, remember, this still is Utah, so while tempting, nobody starts tailgating while still on the Trax.
I arrive at Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium stadium three and a half hours prior to kickoff, fairly ideal tailgate arrival time, although for a rivalry game, there is probably no such thing as too early of an arrival. From the Trax, I walk over to the tailgating side of the stadium via the route the Utes will take their pregame Ute walk on and there are already some families staking out spots for the Ute Walk, the team's pregame walk to the stadium that is pretty much a staple of any decent college football program nowadays.
I specifically selected this week for the Utah trip because the Utes opponent today is BYU, and despite what anyone tries to tell you about how things have changed since Utah moved on to the Pac-12, it is clear, these two schools HATE each other. BYU thinks Utah fans are a bunch of drunken assholes (which every school has their fair dose of - well, I guess not BYU - but every other school); and Utah thinks BYU is a bunch of snots that think they're holier than the Utes and look down upon them in shame. There's also a decent portion of "the good hate" though; the kind of hate that spends all year suppressed within divided families of siblings and spouses with allegiances split between the schools, with each hoping for that W on the field to give them bragging rights all year long, or between ex-high school teammates wanting to one-up each other in what more than one former player has described as "Utah's own Super Bowl."
On the plane flight out, I sat across from some Ute fans who told me we weren't supposed to call it the Holy War anymore. I'm told this a few times throughout the day, that "we aren't supposed to call it the Holy War anymore," but nobody appears to know why. There's some surmising that "someone important" has given this creed, and a lot of extrapolation that is has to do with half of the Utah students and alums being Mormons as well. Regardless, its pretty clear that nobody is taking this declaration seriously. Regardless of religious affiliation, these schools hate each other to divine heights and it'd be selling this rivalry short to call it anything other than a Holy War. The knock-off merchandise guys certainly agree with me because they're still slinging some pretty clever merchandise with halos above the BYU logo and horns sticking out from the U, and sayings such as "The only Cougar I like is your mom" and "Jesus loves (the) U."
While there was certainly some intermingling of BYU fans amongst the sea of red tailgaters, I didn't pass too many Cougar tailgaters on my walk over to the tailgate lot. However, I didn't miss a single Cougar fan I passed thanks to some ingenious Utah kid walking in front of me who thought it was the funniest thing ever to raise his can of PBR to every blue shirt he saw and say "Cheers dude!"
Overall, the tailgating scene at Utah is impressive. There are several large lots filled with red Utah canopies as far as you can see, Ute'd out vehicles of all types, all the requisite tailgate games (cornhole, ladder golf, kan jam, etc.), the sweet smell of smoking meats, and a constant flow of collegiate pageantry from the cheerleaders to the band to some random owl that has been adopted as a mascot nobody seems to know that much about.
As I make my way through the lot I am (1) tremendously impressed and immediately text my friends that we're making the trip when the Bruins travel to Salt Lake next season and (2) cannot figure out why the few BYU fans I do see have shirts and hats of a cat trying to nap on top of the BYU letters. Fair or not, I was told some BYU fans are nice, but I'm not sure that the message of this logo reflects the appropriate gameday attitude.
Is it just me or does the Cougar look like he's trying to take a nice nap?
Over at the tailgate lot, I met some Ute tailgating legends:
Utah Pig Bus
The Utah Pig Bus crew, was billed in at least one article as "one of the oldest and most celebrated tailgate crews at the University of Utah." These guys not only go all out with their own tailgates, but have written several articles for the local paper filling other Utahans in on the joys and how-tos of tailgating. They also have quite the social media following, and I must admit, their twitter feed was filled with excellent, yet family-friendly BYU trolling in the week leading up to the game.
The Pig Bus crew started out as just a group of Phi Delt fraternity brothers who would go to games together and have some beers before the game in the small lot next to the stadium. However, when the Utes were able to get Michigan on the schedule and the crew made a trip to the Big House, everything they thought about tailgating was transformed. The crew was so impressed by everything they saw up in Ann Arbor, they decided they needed to take advantage of all Utah football had to offer and revolutionize tailgating at the U.
Thus, the pig was born, or maybe the bus was born. There is at least some slight disagreement between the patrons of today's tailgate as to what came first. Regardless, these guys do tailgating right.
These guys had too many good stories to tell to capture in a single blog post but among the best was the fact that when Urban Meyer took over the Utes job, they emailed every possible variation of Urban Meyer's email address with a message that they would love to cook their pig for the guys on the team, and get a true assessment of the pig from the teams many Polynesian players. Urban responded directly saying that sounded great, but that they'd probably need more than just one pig, but not to worry, that Urban's wife would handle making the lemonade, since no one could beat her lemonade. Due to an ongoing NCAA investigation, I'm prohibited from telling the rest of this story. Just kidding, although you probably didn't even flinch at the thought that the NCAA would ruin something as innocent as a backyard BBQ. They had the pig, it was delicious, and then Utah went from missing bowl games to 12-0 BCS busters, 40% credit to Urban the Great and 60% to Porky I, II, III, and IV.
The Pig Bus Crew was adamant that they wanted to create something special for the people who came to visit gameday in Utah. They had made previous trips to other campuses and didn't like how they'd been treated as visiting fans, so when tailgating grew into a legitimate part of the gameday experience at Utah, they decided they'd invite visiting fans over to join in on their great food and fun and spread the word about the greatness of Utah tailgating. They always try to work something from the visiting team's region into the gameday menu, like real oysters when Washington is in town or rocky mountain oysters when Colorado makes the trip out. However, on this particular gameday, with these particular visiting fans, there wasn't expected to be too much comingling with the enemy. Even for fans adamant about being hospitable, they figured "those guys will probably hate us no matter what we share with them," so "screw 'em."
Fire Truck Tailgaters
Chuck Jahne has been tailgating before Utah games since 1972, and considering I was told that there wasn't much of a tailgating scene until the early 2000s, I'm guessing when Chuck says that there "wasn't more than a handful of us out here back then," that's not much of an exaggeration. Chuck says that they really started coming to games because it was a cheap form of babysitting. Kids got in for $1, and between the familiarity of the stadium staff and fans at the games, they made sure that the kids couldn't leave the stadium. The kids could run all around the stadium, possibly even onto the field, but they were stuck within the gates of the facility.
However, as football started becoming more serious at the U, they decided the tailgating needed to come along as well. In 1985, a brother of one of Chuck's fellow tailgaters purchased an old fire truck at a charity auction in Armour, South Dakota. When Chuck learned that this truck existed and was just sitting unused in South Dakota, he decided that was exactly what was needed to kick the tailgating up a notch. However, his friend wasn't going to just give this truck away, he had to make a profit on it, so after some intense negotiations, the truck was sold for $826, a solid $1 profit.
It took 2 years to figure out how to get the truck from South Dakota to Utah, since it didn't have any brakes and from what I understand there are some hills in that part of the country where having brakes is advisable.
The Tailgating Truck is now reserved for only the most sacred of days - Ute gamedays, St. Patrick's Day, and weddings. The truck has been in "about a dozen weddings over the years" first whicking away the newlyweds at Chuck's own wedding and in a few months it will be dropping the bride off to walk down the aisle at Chuck's grandson wedding.
Chuck introduced me to the tailgating group's unofficial spokeswoman who kindly took the time to share the history with me. After she shared with me the history, I asked her how she was feeling about the game. She leaned in quietly and asked, "Can I be honest with you?" "Please, please do," I told her. "I hate them. I just hate them. And it's not because they're Mormon, it's just the way they act. I don't know, I just don't trust the Cougs." Now this is pretty typical of any rivalry game, but then she went on. "That's why it's a little tough having this contingent of those guys running our team." I'm sorry, "those" guys. As in your own team's coaches? She explained further, "I mean Whit has been great, but he's still a Cougar. I just don't know."
Kyle Whittingham, "Whit," played at BYU from 1978-1981. He has been coaching at Utah for 22 straight years and is in his 11th year as Head Coach, he boasts a 97-46 overall record, is 9-1 in bowl games, beat a Nick Saban Alabama team in the Sugar Bowl, and turned down the head coaching job at BYU twice now. Yet, some fans that have been following the team for over 40 years are a little skeptical about their head coach because he is a BYU alum.
I only mention this because after this conversation with this very nice lady, I brought this question up with everyone else I ran into, and about half the people I spoke with AGREED that it was tough to completely trust their BYU alum coach. Dear SEC fans, you apparently do not have a monopoly on college football crazy.
UteHaul Hearse Tailgaters
Multiple times throughout the day, people I talked to told me that I had to go talk to the people with the hearse in the corner of the lot. I was told that they were some of the only ones to survive the Fassel Era. This is in reference to Jim Fassel, Utah's coach for the mid-80s who actually won about 40% of his games, but went 1-4 vs. BYU and as one Ute fan and former player told me later in the day, "No coach will ever be fired for losing to Southern Cal or UCLA, but you better beat those 'holy boys' from down south."
Frank and Susan Christensen are the ones who own "the hearse in the corner." The hearse has a red and white covered steering wheel and when you go to press the horn, out comes the good ol' Utah fight song - Utah Man. The Christensens have 3.5 spaces reserved for their tailgate and they make the most of every inch. Each game, the hearse tows in a trailer quite unlike any other.
The Christensens trailer is not only an homage to their beloved Utes, but an equally devout tribute to their distaste for everything about that "team down south."
The trailer is covered with keepsakes from all of the great Ute traditions and decked out in red and white in all but one area: the bathroom. The trailer bathroom is dedicated to BYU's Cosmo the Cougar. The bathroom is decorated in blue and white, includes a nice bYu logo target to focus in on when using "Cosmo's Palace." There are also many recently made BYU related signs, everything from references to their move out of a conference into being an independent (Utes translate as: NOBODY LIKES THEM!) and rejection by the Big 12 to mocking posters about BYU missing out on recent appointments in the Mormon church, which went to Utah and Utah State alums instead.
However, as Frank Christensen, who has missed 1 game in the past 30 seasons told me, this game against their "former rival" doesn't really matter anymore, it's all about winning the Pac-12 and getting to the Rose Bowl now, he tells me. With all due respect to my hospitable hosts and in deep appreciation for their pride in being part of the Pac-12 and competing for Rose Bowls, nobody spends this much time and energy renovating their trailer and hearse to mock a "former" rival. Regardless of when in the season this game is played, or the absence of any conference impact, this game clearly matters to just about every walking soul in Utah. Cheers dude!
