McNabb Family Memories: SUN BOWL BOUND

Utah went to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas this year. We played Georgia Tech. The game was on Dec. 31. We left the night of Dec. 26 so that we could enjoy all of the festivities. We stayed in the Marriott. Tuesday night we were in our room and I got a message from Facebook from one of my high school friends, Jalynne Almond Murry, that I haven't seen for over 25 years. She said, "We are in El Paso at the Marriott and saw that the Utah football team was staying here and wondered if you were here." What a small world. She and her husband live in East Texas and were going to Utah to visit her mom and had car problems and ended up spending the night in El Paso. I don't think that it was a coincidence. Bill and I visited with them for about 3 hours Tuesday night and then we ran into each other in the lobby the next day and spent another hour visiting. It was so much fun. Wish we lived closer so that we could spend more time together.

Austin would have just spent the days in the room watching bowl games but I had to get him out and give him some culture. (: We rented a car and drove around El Paso looking at the sites. We went to the mall and the outlet mall. Always a must on our trips! Thursday night, Kyle invited us to go to a Mexican Fiesta that was being held for the coaches and wives at the Museum in downtown El Paso. They had interesting exhibits, one on Norman Rockwell that I really liked. They served traditional mexican food and entrainment. We really enjoyed ourselves.

The best part of the trip was the game. The weather was perfect....66 degrees and sunshine. We played a close game for the first half. B.J. Thomas was the half time entertainment. Seeing Jalynne and then hearing him took me back a few years. It was fun to listen to all of the good ole songs. You could tell who was from that era.....they had their hands up and were waving them while all the youngsters had perplexed looks on their faces! We didn't have a very good 3rd quarter and found ourselves down by 2 touchdowns. We scored one and were down by 1. Georgia Tech had to punt on 4th down. It was a short kick and Griff ran it back 30 years to the Georgia Tech 25 yard line. His return set up the tying touchdown. We went into overtime. GT got the ball first and made a field goal. We scored a TD and won the game. It was awesome!

GO UTES!