I sit in class on Tuesday afternoon impatiently tapping my foot, only three more days. I pull up ESPN to check and recheck win-loss records, but that leaves me little solace. So I then pull up the expert opinions; they offer no definitive answers. I go to my default, the Vegas odds, you can’t go wrong with math right? And yet even they conflict, it all comes down to one thing, who shows up on game day.
Football game day in Laramie is truly like nothing else on earth. Both of my parents are Alumni and we have been coming to games since I was little enough to remember. In fact Wyoming Football games are something that gives me some of my earliest memories and by far my most vivid.
My experience now is just as I remember it as a child. Walking up to the stadium through rows and rows of fired up grills and open coolers as tailgaters play catch over your head. Waiting in line to get into the War, families mixed in with UW students and old timers alike as the smell of concession stand food and kettle corn fills the air.
Then the games begin and it’s like the entire crowd becomes a single entity as the Marching Band pulses out the notes that become our collective heartbeat. The crowd simultaneously holding its breath in moments of turmoil and swelling with excitement in moments of triumph.
Even outside of Laramie you would be hard pressed to find another state with such dedication to a singular college team. In cafes all across the state, old men meet well before the sun rises to debate the merits of Coach Bohl and compare this year’s team against the legendary teams of old.
When it comes time for the game to begin, you will notice less traffic on the streets as people are either crammed into living rooms at houses that are lucky enough to have the correct satellite package to carry the game, or crowded around radios in anticipatory silence.
And all this can be surmised in one single moment when the team approaches the stands to sing the school song in celebration after a home victory. For in that moment it does not matter whether you are listening to the game on the radio in another part of Wyoming, watching it on TV in another part of the world, or singing in the stands in Laramie. In that moment, if only for that moment, we are all Cowboys.
