As a former BYU football player during the 1980s I participated in 3 Friday night home games in Provo, Utah. My sophomore year (1986) we lost to Colorado State in Provo, and my junior and senior years we beat Utah State in Provo. Why is this important? Because BYU received special dispensation from the NCAA to play these 3 Friday night home games. These games ordinarily would not be allowed because they violate laws that protect high school football. If every college was playing on Fridays, there would be far fewer people in attendance at local high school games.
To this very day (at the time I write this BYU is playing Louisiana Tech in Provo on a Friday night), the NCAA grants BYU this ridiculous exemption under the guise that this is a special religous weekend. What is so special? LDS General Conference, aka the most boring weekend in the history of religion.
I totally respect BYU for still not allowing their teams to violate the Sabbath and play on Sundays. I laugh at the reasoning behind having to play every other year at home on the first weekend in October. Why does the LDS church make its flagship school play on Friday night? To avoid a conflict with one or both of the 2 insipid meetings on Saturday.
If the LDS church were getting information from JESUS and relaying it every 6 months in General Conference I would walk the 750 miles to Salt Lake if I had to. Unfortunately, as most clinically sane people know, the Mormon church is not getting revelation anymore, and so the entire weekend is a chance for sycophants to quote their superiors who are higher up the hierarchy.
If JESUS had something He wanted Mormon leaders to say in conference, leadership would not have to worry about a football game being played at the same time. Any sincere truth seeker would either be in attendance or be tuning in to hear what GOD had to say. No threat of that every happening.
Now all Utahns have to do to avoid intense boredom is watch Alabama or Clemson or Ohio State play during conference. Or they can do something more important like weeding or napping. If it weren't for the Tabernacle Choir singing a few hymns of praise, the whole thing would be grounds for lawsuits involving religious torture.
My freshmen year (1983) Steve Young and company beat PAC 10 champion UCLA in Los Angeles 38-37 on "conference saturday." Because the game was in California, we were "forced" to play on Saturday. I am sure the tabernacle was full of fools that day, but most of the TV sets in Utah were tuned to ESPN. UCLA was the PAC 10 champ that year because the league had not yet allowed in 2 weak athletic schools (Utah and Colorado). With those two lesser schools the league became the PAC 12 in a ploy to get a conference championship game (and millions of dollars) for football.
BYU ended up ranked 7th in the country in 1983. I did not play very much as a back up, but I got to watch the greatest season of quarterbacking in college history. I know Steve Young was robbed by not winning the Heisman trophy that year.
The 1984 National Championship team did not include me, because I was serving a mission in Bolivia. Based on JESUS's promise in Matthew 19:29, (with no inspired change by Joseph Smith)
"And everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren,
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands
for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold,
and shall inherit everlasting life."
I would not trade that time talking to people about JESUS and the Book of Mormon for anything. I do regret helping 84 people join a false church.
By the way, it is BYU 28-LA Tech 7 at halftime on Friday.
Tomorrow, Saturday, the old guys devoid of priesthood, but full of priestcraft get their chance. A chance to blather on twice without having to worry about something else more interesting happening nearby. And with absolutely no chance of anything interesting happening in the conference center either.
