Rise and Shout

Jodee knew I was excited for the football season to start, so she let me put my creative energies to good use and throw a BYU football kickoff party. The theme of the party was a "Quarterback Combine" in which each contestant had to compete at 9 different stations that would test them physically, mentally and emotionally in the hopes of finding the next great BYU QB. Congrats to our the champion, Travis Adamson, whose reward was a ticket to attend the BYU vs. TCU game in Provo later this month in what is shaping up to be a great game. I think a fun time was had by all. A special thanks to Matt Bellini Molen for being team photographer.

Cosmo was on hand to preside over the festivities.

One station involved throwing Nerf footballs at suspended seat cushion targets while wearing an authentic game-worn BYU football helmet.

Another station required each contestant to belt out the Cougar Fight Song while accompanied by the Cougar Marching band. Points were deducted for missed words.

Jodee was a tough judge.


Torry got extra points for enthusiasm.


Still other stations included:

Computer hand-eye coordination game
"Field Goal Kicking" using origami paper footballs

Testing who could name the leading yardage QB for each year over the last 36 years

Testing who could name the Top 10 all time QB's for yardage in BYU history

A review of the highlights of several classic BYU vs Utah "Holy War" showdowns followed by trivia

Looking at the team marketing poster from this year and identifying the players in the poster based solely on their uniform number.

Mike tries his luck at the hand-eye coordination game, Bishop pondering QB statistics, me pretending I know what I'm doing in the football toss.






The trivia portion was awesome, but what was even more awesome was reliving the highlights of games where the Cougars beat the Utes!
But perhaps my favorite event of the evening was the one where I dressed up in every article of BYU clothing I own and each person had to guess how many articles I was wearing. At the start, I was wearing so many things that I couldn't move my arms and had to be assisted to get things on and off.

Fortunately, I had Jodee as my assistant, faithfully pulling back each layer of the onion.

Brandon was closest, with a guess of 38.

But even his was low. The final count came to 52 items, a wardrobe I am quite proud of.



The true measure of the success of a party is if you have someone clamoring to get in when they should be soundly asleep in bed. Beckham just couldn't contain himself with all the commotion.

Thank you to Jodee for giving me this creative outlet for my fandom with the guys. We had a great time and it fired us up for a great (fingers crossed year).