When the blue and the red take the field on Saturday morning at Rice-Eccles Stadium, do yourself a favor: pay close attention, take note of what you see and feel and commit it to memory.

Not in some casual way. This is no time for laissez-faire football. Dig into it with heart, mind and soul, especially if you have a strong rooting interest. Even if you, personally, don’t, chances are decent that many of those around you do — family members, friends, neighbors, work colleagues, fellow parishioners, your barber, your grocer, your mail deliverer. Darn near everybody’s in the pool.

So, get in there with ‘em.

Doesn’t matter if you’re fortunate enough to be at the game, taking in all the firsthand sights and sounds and smells and sensations with your own eyes and ears and nose and sensory receptors, or watching on television or listening on the radio.

Let all that feedback into your brain and let it lodge there.

Why?

Because football, a football game like this, is more than just fun. If the care factor (you’re a real fan) or just the concentration (you’re an interested observer) is ratcheted up high, it’s a road marker, a milepost, for your life.

It’s one of the best things sports can be.

A snapshot in time.

Which is to say, whatever happens on Saturday — whether the outcome is what you hoped for or what you hated, you can remember not just the result, not just the key plays in every quarter, not just the pregame and postgame and everything involved with all of that — you can tie it to the people with whom you experience it, in the stands or in the TV den.

Not just the people around you, but where you are in your journey. How old you are, how happy or sad you are, the exact ages of your kids in this moment, how satisfied you are or aren’t with your job, your marriage, your health, your overall condition, yeah, your life.

Attach all that to Devon Dampier throwing a 50-yard touchdown pass or Bear Bachmeier shaking off four tackles and breaking away to 50 yards of daylight. Rivet it to a game-winning goal-line stand or a pick-6 or a blocked or missed field goal at game’s end or an athletic director protesting by running onto the field like a madman. Whatever.

I look back over the many Utah-BYU games I’ve witnessed in my life, and even though I haven’t had a rooting interest for the vast majority of them, I have been keenly dialed in. I don’t remember everything, but I do remember more than a few of the moments on the field and where I was on my personal timeline when they happened. Maybe you can remember both, too.

I remember Utah beating BYU, 57-28, in 1988 in an upset that most so-called experts never saw coming. Scott Mitchell had a day, throwing for a gazillion yards and the Cougars turned the ball over again and again. A fresh-faced Ty Detmer entered in the latter stages. BYU had beaten Utah regularly over that span and the Utes dropping 57 large on their rival was quite a reward.

I lived in Southern California at the time, with my wife, Lisa, and two baby girls. All three gals were the center of my existence.

I remember Chris Yergensen kicking that 55-yard field goal in 1993 to win the game for the Utes, 34-31. Utah hadn’t won in Provo in what seemed like a long while, and afterward Ron McBride was as jubilant as any human had ever been. His arms were outstretched, his face was ruddy, his grin was massive, his hair looked like a flock of magpies had built a nest in it.

I had moved to Utah from the L.A. area four months earlier; my first three kids were 8, 5, and 2 years old, with two more children yet to come. All five are full-grown adults now. Man, I love each of them as they are, but I miss those days when they’d dogpile on Dad when I came home from work. You turn around once or twice, and they grow up and cross a threshold you couldn’t see coming back in the day.

I remember watching, scribbling notes in the closing minutes of BYU’s victory over Utah in LaVell Edwards’ last rivalry game in 2000, when Brandon Doman led the Cougars down the field for a score after making good on a fourth-and-13 conversion deep in BYU territory, completing a 34-27 comeback win.

That was the year Lisa and I came home from dinner one night, and one of my kids had invited 30 friends over to our house, unbeknownst to us. When we arrived, I saw a kid standing in front of the house, hitting golf balls down the street with my new golf clubs.

I remember the 2003 rivalry game, when the Utes beat the Cougars, 3-0, in a contest that seemed as though it was being played in the middle of a storm on Antarctica. I looked out the window from the press box at all the people who were braving the harsh conditions and thought, “These folks are out of their ever-lovin’ minds.”

The family took a trip to Hawaii that year, probably so I could thaw out from the cold winter conditions in Utah.

I remember standing on the sideline at Rice-Eccles in 2006, BYU needing a touchdown for a win, with John Beck looking, looking, looking, scrambling right, looking and hitting Jonny Harline, throwing the ball across his body to his tight end who cradled the looping pass as he solitarily knelt in the end zone for a 33-31 win.

At that time, my life was busy. Lisa and I were enjoying 23 years of marital bliss, I was writing columns for The Tribune, doing my radio show, doing a weekly TV show, and trying to figure out how to deal with having two daughters away at college and three at home still, wondering why time — life — was flying by as fast as it was.

In the 2012 rivalry game, BYU missed a game-tying field goal and lost 24-21, but that’s not what stands out. The memory swirls around Utah fans storming the field three different times, with officials chasing them back into the stands after penalties created more time on the clock.

I became a grandpa that year.

The game in 2024 was one of the wildest ever. BYU trailed on its last possession, attempting to preserve a game-winning drive that materialized only after a defensive holding call against the Utes on a failed BYU fourth-down conversion. The flag flew, the drive continued, finishing with a Will Ferrin field goal that gave the Cougars a 22-21 win.

Utah athletic director Mark Harlan went berserk at the penalty, and afterward called an impromptu press conference informing the world that the game had been stolen from Utah and, in so many words, that he hated the Big 12 Conference. He half-heartedly apologized after his wife gave him the what-for. “As much outside criticism as I took for that, none of it was as [fierce] as my wife’s criticism,” he said.

Moving toward 50 years of marriage at that point — not quite, but getting there — with 10 grandkids, I was learning to cherish every year, every moment of having breath, of being alive. Gratitude was the word.

There are all the other games, as well, decorated with everything from “pump my gas” to “hate everything about ‘em,” to “you do what’s right on and off the field … magic happens” to “they so poo-poo, y’all can tweet that,” and all the memories, too.

Enjoy the game on Saturday, then, and, with any luck, win or lose, let it mark a time worth remembering in your life, inside and out of football.