A Day in the Life...during football season

This is John Beck, former BYU quarterback, who was drafted to the Dolphins (Brandon's favorite NFL team). We ran into him in the airport once and Brandon ran after him. Our plane left at 6 a.m. This picture was taken literally around 4:30 in the morning. Poor John Beck.

My husband is what you might call...intense. Obsessive perhaps. Exhausting sometimes. Let's just combine the three and call him EXTENSIVE. I told him yesterday I was going to write what my life was like during college football season. He laughed and said I'd have to embellish it a little. I laughed and said it doesn't need embellishing.

Let's start with Saturdays:

• He wakes up with the nervous shakes. He wakes me up by yelling "WOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" in my face.
• Next he races to the paper/internet to read the scoop on who's favored to win the game. He texts everyone he knows something like "Rise and Shout!!" or "Go Cougars!!"
• He then lays out every Cougar shirt he owns to pick the right one. This year he had one specially made with Max Hall's quote on the back: "I hate Utah. I hate everything about them..." $25 for a t-shirt. Thanks.
• He leaves for the game to meet up with all the other Eddy men, this year my dad goes too. I can't quite put into words what happens at the game exactly, I have only seen it once, and I would describe it as a kind of hysterical euphoria.
• On the way home from the game, he listens to the postgame show. This is fine, except that no one in the car is allowed to talk. It's a very long drive from Provo. Once he even called in and got on the radio.
• Depending on the outcome of the game, I can expect what kind of mood will arrive with him when he gets home. If they have lost, there's usually very little conversation.
• He will not go to bed until he has seen the highlights from the game that he just attended on ESPN. This is a perk to not having TV anymore. Downside, now he peruses the internet for hours looking for every bit of footage from the game in its entirety.

The rest of the week:

• He talks to everyone at church who will listen about the Cougars.
• He frequents (and when I say frequent, I mean like about as much as a pregnant woman pees in the day) the Cougar Board website.
• He talks to Every. Single. Person. in his phone that is also a Cougar fan and wants to talk about the Cougars. Sometimes more than once a day.
• He gets angry at people on Facebook/TV/newspaper who do not like the Cougars ("There's no such thing as a Utah fan, only a Cougar hater!")
• He watches press conferences. Not even recent ones. He watches old ones on YouTube also.
• Our conversations are generally dominated by football. I was telling him one day about my maternity leave pay, and he stopped me midsentence, no joke, and told me that he just couldn't believe that "backstabbing Fresno State".
• I. Almost. Killed. Him. when BYU was trying to go independent. I finally just gave up trying to talk about anything else (i.e. our child)
• There's generally a new issue that also dominates the week. This week it's Jake Heaps vs. Riley Nelson as quarterback. This is what I hear/see/read all week until the new issue arises from the next game.
• He can tell you any stat, any date, any player, any game that something happened in. ( "Oh my word, that's the same pass play they used in the 1981 game against New Mexico!")
• He limits the amount of red Ryker wears (not even lying). If he has on a red outfit, I usually get a response like, "Why is my child in Satan's color?"
• He tried to teach my nephew about Satan and Jesus using the U of U and BYU.
• He absolutely will not, under any condition, allow us to wear any other color but blue on game days.
• Brandon suggested "Lavell" as our child's middle name. I told him no.
• His dying wish is to be buried under the 50-yard line at Lavell Edwards Stadium.

You might think this is embellished, I promise, it is not. Ask the people who are around who also want to hurt him during this time of year. This does not stop until at least a month after the season has ended. This is my life. Please help. It exhausts me. I am a Cougar fan, yes, but Brandon is an EXTENSIVE Cougar Fan.

Thanks for listening and Rise and Shout (he made me put that).