A fresh start with a clean slate — is there anything more rejuvenating to a hopeful soul, or in the context of sports — to a new football season?
For BYU, Saturday is that day.
It wasn’t that last season wasn’t very good — far from it (12-2), or the season before that (11-2). It’s just that starting stuff is a lot of fun and the possibilities are everywhere.
For the team, the offseason of roster building, coaching changes, surgeries, workouts and even inner-department conflicts will be relegated to the rearview mirror the moment the band splits in two, fireworks explode in the sky and the Cougars take the field.
As the army of young men, all dressed up in royal and white, run into the twilight of September’s first weekend, they do so while riding an unprecedented high. In fact, everything is up. Winning is up! Recruiting is up! Ticket prices are up — and as a result, expectations are up too!
Never has BYU been mentioned by so many pundits as their pick to contend, if not to win the Big 12 outright and reach the College Football Playoff. Many of them have the Cougars hosting a postseason game in mid-December.
Not since 1985 has BYU been ranked as high as it is (No. 14) ahead of the season opener and never before have the Cougars returned for a new season with the reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year at running back, Freshman Offensive Player of the Year at quarterback and the Big 12 Coach of the Year.
So here we are. It seems like a really good place to be. Throw in a Cougartail and a Dr Pepper and it’s Xanadu for a fanbase that wants a great experience, national relevance and a four-game win streak against Utah. Beating No. 4 Notre Dame is also high on the list.
Sports and starting points go together like Junior Mints and popcorn. The cry of “Start your engines!” fires up an Indy 500. An opening bell triggers a title fight. A starter’s gun sends off the sprinters, and those opening gates spring the horses at the Kentucky Derby — all to an adrenaline rush that keeps us young and wears us out at the same time.
Oftentimes, the buildup is more entertaining than the event. In the case of covering Mike Tyson fights, the three to six months leading up to the opening bell were far more entertaining than the 60-second beat down that followed it.
It’s been nine months of hype, hope, anxiety and excitement for Cougar fans. Part of the romance to football is the long wait for it to get here. Perhaps that is what Sir Thomas Overbury was really writing about in his 1616 declaration — “Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it.” James Howell might have also been a pre-football fan for his words in 1650: “Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweetens it.”
Either way, football was gone and now it’s back — and it’s sweet.
Humanities 101 was so good (hardly) I took it twice — first as a disinterested freshman at Ricks College (BYU-Idaho) and the second as a much more determined, post-mission student at BYU.
Understanding paintings or memorizing artists is not unlike trying to figure out the scheme of a coaching staff or mastering a depth chart. With time and study, certain patterns or styles become key identifiers.
On a canvas, Rembrandt used a contrast of light and dark. Picasso preferred geometric shapes and for van Gogh — it was literally anything goes. They each produced masterpieces in their own way.
On a football field, Kalani Sitake demands discipline. Offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick seeks execution, and new defensive coordinator Kelly Poppinga professes physicality. Those will be the identifiers for whether BYU puts another masterpiece together.
Come Saturday at kickoff (6 p.m. MDT, ESPN+), the canvas will be blank, the slate will be clean, and the start of a new season will finally begin.
Don’t you just love it?
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.