I'm proud to say that I've instilled a love of BYU football in my children. It was something passed on to me and my brothers by my mother (my sister didn't quite catch the vision). In fact one year for Christmas my main present (and my brother Stephen's) was for us to go with our mom to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to see the Cougars play. What fun it was, too!
I took Dylan and Jayden to a game this fall, just the 3 of us. We decided to go down early to see what the Cougar Walk was all about. We had heard it was to greet the team as they entered into the property and locker rooms. So we arrived plenty early, got free T-shirts, and brought along the football Grandma Gibson gave Dylan for his 10th birthday to get signatures. His #1 dream was to get Cody Hoffman's signature. We had great hopes of getting signatures as the players walked by.
Unfortunately as they walked by, they were all dressed in the same clothes, and not in their jerseys. Sure is hard to know who is who when they don't have a name on their back. Not to mention that when they are wearing helmets, we don't get used to what their faces look like. We didn't get a single signature as the team arrived, mainly because we didn't know who to ask. We still had fun giving them fives, and all the team members had more T-shirts that they were giving out. All three of us received one from different players. For all we know it could have been Cody Hoffman, Kyle Van Noy, or even Taysom Hill.
We were super early since we came to the Cougar Walk. I think we were like 2 hours early, or was it 3? Either way we had plenty of time to walk around the pregame festivities. We got lots of free things, including backpacks, pens, beanies, blankets, scarves, and magnets. Jayden decided to give the bucking bull a try. It was slipperier than he thought it would be.
We ran into Cosmo and of course had to take a picture.
We sat in the Gibson's seats for the most part, but spent some time sitting with Grandma Kirk, Tyler, Spencer, and Uncle Jon as well. One of the boys did spend the game with them. We had two tickets with the Gibson's and picked up a third ticket for cheap.
After the game we planned to stake out a spot to get signatures as the team left the field. We thought we had the perfect spot. Unfortunately as most the players walked by, they just ignored the crowd. A few skipped nearly the whole crowd, and just signed one or two things for people at the end of crowd as they entered the locker room. For so many of the well known players, all the people would call out their names, hoping to get them to sign footballs and posters. It was so sad to see these men walk past these kids who thought the world of them. Several of the big lineman took off their gloves and game them to kids, which was a kind gesture. I don't think I would have wanted one of the sweaty gloves, by had my boys recieved one, I'm sure they would have loved it. One of the last players off the field was Taysom Hill. Let me tell you how impressed I am with him. He took the time to go down the entire line and sign ball after ball, and poster after poster. He was probably one of the most tired men who came off the field, but he recognized how much it would mean to all these kids for him to give them some attention. His signature is the one that looks like it says Pay #4. Dylan traced over it when we got home, because the pen was quite dried out after us holding it out to so many players, and none of them responding. After that we kept the lid on tight as much as we could. Dylan was so bummed he didn't get Cody Hoffman's signature, so we waited around quite a while, getting a few other signatures as some players came in and out of the locker room for various reasons. Finally I got the guts to ask a player headed back in if he would mind taking Dylan's football into Cody Hoffman as see if he would sign it. I told him that it was the one signature that Dylan really, really wanted. He took pity on us, and did it! Totally made the day for Dylan. His is the C. Hoff #2 that you can see. Dylan loves this football and proudly has it displayed in his room.
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