One gentleman sat next to my brother and started chatting with us. When Dawe pulled the guy's shoe off and tossed it to the sideline, a big meathead looking guy in front of us hollered "that's Mormons for ya!" Immediately our new friend and the people around him quieted him down and let him know that every BYU fan they'd met had been great. After that exchange he softened up to us and we chatted back and forth about football the whole game. He thanked us for coming when we left.

The guy sitting next to us was determined to buy us a beer. He said that he'd heard that Mormons don't drink, but "he wasn't going to tell anybody." We thanked him for his hospitality, but declined. He was persistent. My brother finally mentioned that even though we don't drink beer, we both enjoy diet coke. If he wanted to grab us a couple of diet cokes, we'd drink with him. He did just that. We sat there drinking our diet cokes and him his beer and had a wonderful time.

As we left, the disappointed Vols fans thanked us for coming and let us know how highly they now thought of BYU and our fans. They mentioned that they'd never seen more visiting fans in their stadium and quipped how wonderful we had all been, "but maybe that's just because we're used to Gator fans."

I imagine that similar stories happened all around the stadium that night. This game was not only a wonderful result for the team, it was a big win for the church in terms of PR. A lot of Vols fans now understand that Mormons aren't as stuffy as they'd originally thought. They noticed that we bowed in reverence while they said the Neyland Stadium invocation, proudly sang the national anthem with them, and saw that we love football just like them. IOW...Bomani was exactly right and hopefully the BOT takes notice.