Fall = Football

In moving to upstate NY, I have been able to somewhat atone to my wife for the almost unforgivable sin of not having our wedding in the fall. Lisa has always loved this time of year and the colors that accompany it, and those colors and beauty are quite evident around us in our new home of Rochester. That being said, I love the fall for a completely different reason. Football. Greatest of all sports, with the power to make grown men cry (honestly, of all of the times that I have shed a tear in my life, it is quite feasible that half of those occasions were sports related). There is something about the crisp autumn air, the heat of the game (my mother would say the stink of the game, but that is another story), and the sound of bodies crunching in ways that probably are not very healthy in the long term, but sure is satisfying in the here and now.
What really gets me excited about football this time of year, is the Wyoming Cowboys. I would say that most people who know me, are aware of my outspokenness for all things Wyoming, but most especially for the pokes (for those of you uneducated in cowboy isms, cowboy = cowpoke = poke). What makes my love for the pokes even that much greater, is the fact the I am almost utterly and completely alone in my poke adoration and must fight off the tide of blue that will forever surround me, thanks to religious associations. And that sea of (quite often self righteous and even sometimes oblivious) blue will always and forever be loathed (key the Wicked music, you know the song, but instead of blond, it would be blue - you all know that Galinda/Glinda is definitely a big haired with many highlights, overly tanned and now orange, happy valley girl) at least athletically (that clarification is necessary, because I actually do have friends that attended BYU, not to mention my wife, and the fact that I even lived in Provo for several years, not to worry, whenever I was on campus, I wore the beautiful colors of God's country - brown and gold!). Even in my optimism for Wyoming football, who barely managed to pull off a win at home over a not too terribly great Ohio team, I don't turn a blind eye towards reality. I am well aware that Wyoming will realistically finish somewhere between 4th and 6th in the MWC, unless a miracle occurs on offense (miracle meaning that Wyoming somehow manages to obtain an offense). I am also aware that BYU has a shot of winning the conference yet again, and possibly playing in a BCS bowl at the end of the year. Add to that the fact that Wyoming has to go to BYU and play, I don't have too much hope that the brown and gold will pull out a W at the Y. That doesn't mean I won't talk trash with the foaming sea of blue I interact with on a regular basis, nor does it mean that I won't be cheering my heart out in hopes that UW ruins the possibility of a perfect season/conference championship/major bowl game for those that bleed blue. It just means that I'll have to resort to some other means in order to try and weaken the blind faith and adoration of the cougar nation that is heaped upon all things BYU. That being said, nothing would make me happier than to see my beloved pokes waltz into happy valley and terrorize it's inhabitants. Have a great day.