I found this posting on Cougarboard.com, a chat room for BYU fans. We are all euphoric over the BYU bowl win, the 10 straight wins to end the season, and the overall class-act this team was and promises to continue to be. I've wondered how I can get nervous for a game I of which I am only a spectator, why a loss can ruin my weekend, why I'm decorating my baby-boy's bedroom in a particular Blue and White motif, and why I am so happy about this season and this team. I thought this post articulated very nicely why we care so much about something that is "just a game." "Bronco said something incredibly important in his post-game interview on KSL. He said that the way the team was put together, the ideals it espoused, the commitment it had not to football but to life, to the mission of the university, was what bound it so tightly to the community, leading not only to full stadia but to 40,000 people in blue at the bowl game and 10,000 of us on the field in Las Vegas, with a team that didn't want to leave that field as long as we were there.
"The LDS community is a strange one, and we feel that strangeness keenly. We feel the constant weight of believing deeply in something that we cannot always live up to. We want our representatives, our "soldiers", to be victorious, but we cannot have them be victorious while ignoring the code that makes BYU - and by extension the LDS community - unique. We would rather have them be only moderately successful yet bound to the same commitments we are, than to be like other men in order to be "winners" in a game we all know deep down doesn't matter very much.
"What we desperately want is a team that represents our code, our beliefs, openly, proudly - and then WINS ANYWAY. Or best of all, wins only BECAUSE of its commitment to that code. I feel, and I suspect I am not alone, that this team is precisely that. It acts the way I want my team to act, with community service, firesides, scripture and commitment and humility and all the rest of it, and then IT WINS. It wins with a 5'9" cornerback. It wins with a patchwork offensive line. It wins with walk-ons. It wins with grace and with class and it wins by belting you in the mouth and daring you to talk back. This team didn't apologize for being different. It embraced that difference, even credited that difference with making it special on and off the field.
"For these reasons, this is my favorite BYU team of all time. Better than the '84 team, which I didn't know well, and better than the '96 team, which I knew very well. Better than the heroic, but flawed, teams of the Ty Detmer era. This is the best. For me, this is the best, because it started poorly and made mistakes, as I do, and then rose to become something nearly perfect.
"Also for these reasons, I believe that the future is brighter than even this. Bronco is recruiting players that believe in this system. He's not recruiting football players and saying, "hey, there's this honor code thing you'll have to get along with while you're here." He's going to the players and their parents and saying "we want men who behave like this because it's the right way to behave. Behaving this way makes our football team what it is. You want to come here, this is where we start." Those players will make this program better than it is now. Bronco will, within five years, have a complement of players recruited for their commitment and their ability, not just their ability alone. What such a group may do defies the imagination. What a marvelous time to be a Cougar. "
