For 82-year-old Utah grandma, traveling to Rose Bowl game ‘about the biggest thing in my life’

Diane Mantyla and her husband had season tickets to University of Utah football games and tailgated for upward of two decades until her husband passed away in 2004. She hasn’t been to a Utah game since, but she will be attending Saturday’s Rose Bowl game in Pasadena between the Utes and Ohio State.

“This football game is about the biggest thing in my life,” said Mantyla, 82, who never misses a Utes game on TV. “Too bad my dad still isn’t alive because he was the football nut; that’s where I learned football, was when my dad was alive when they first started televising football games back in the 1960s.

“Boy, we watched an awful lot of football — pro, college, anybody who was on TV. I’ve always had a love of that.”

Mantyla’s step grandson, Christian Berg, is doing the driving from the Salt Lake City area, with a one-day rest stop in Las Vegas. Along for the ride are Berg’s 12-year-old son Finnley and a cousin (Lisa). Mantyla is paying most of the freight for the trip.

Mantyla these days uses a walker, so doing the Rose Parade as well was not a real option.

Then again, Mantyla already treated her family to a trip to the Rose Parade about 15 years ago.

“We were worried about grandma being able to do all those events the same day, so we had to make a tough call,” Berg said. “We talked about going to the parade and then we looked at the amount of walking involved back and forth. We just thought, OK, we’ve seen the parade once, we don’t want to burn her out for the game.”

The idea to make this trip came about ahead of the Pac-12 championship game between Utah and Oregon, won by the Utes 38-10 on Dec. 3 in Las Vegas. It was Utah’s first Pac-12 title.

“Grandma and I share a love of the University of Utah,” Berg said. “We’ve connected for years and years; I’ve been in the family 18 years. She called me and started asking me some questions around the Pac-12 championship game, about what would happen if the Utes win and I said, “Grandma, why don’t I come over and we’ll watch the game together.’

“We watched the game and we talked during that game about how wonderful it would be, what a dream come true it would be, to go to the Rose Bowl.”

Once it appeared the Utes were on their way to victory, the talk became serious.

“We looked at each other as they were looking like they might win and we said, ‘Are we going to do this? Is this serious? Can we?,’ ” Berg said. “And the rest is history.”

Going this season is particularly noteworthy to Mantyla and Berg because Utah in just the past year has lost two players. Sophomore cornerback Aaron Lowe was shot and killed at a party on Sept. 26 and running back Ty Jordan, the 2020 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, died Christmas Day 2020 from what was determined to be an accidental self-inflicted gun-shot wound.

The team dedicated their Pac-12 championship to them.

When Berg was asked if he’s worried about the game being canceled because of the coronavirus, as many bowl games have over the past week, he mentioned those two players.

“This Utah football team has dealt with unimaginable tragedies,” he said. “This whole state, the whole community has watched two of its most beloved players die. And so I hope … I believe that there is divine intervention. If there is one more miracle left in this season for Utah, it’s that the game can be played.”

This has been a long-running dream for Mantyla. She didn’t even want to entertain the thought that the game would not be played.

“If they cancel the Rose Bowl, I’ll probably … I don’t know what I’d do,” she said. “I’d sit down and cry a lot, I’ll tell you.”

As an aside, Berg shared a story about how his two older sons — upon learning there were just four spots for the trip — said he should take his youngest.  The family then was able to have Utes wide receiver Britain Covey send a Christmas morning video (which Berg said has gotten over 100,000 views) to Finnley letting him know he’d be coming out to the game.

As for the game itself, Mantyla had some advice — don’t count out the underdog Utes, who are ranked No. 10 in the AP poll. Ohio State is No. 7.

“I think our team has set a camaraderie between them this year because of the devastation that they had early on in the year with two players dying,” Mantyla said. “I think that Utah is almost unbeatable, I really do.”

She said others have doubted the Utes, who are making their first Rose Bowl game appearance.

“Everybody goes, ‘Utah, what are they doing in the Rose Bowl?’ ” Mantyla said. “You see that attitude in the Pac-12. Well, we taught the Pac-12 a lesson this year.”

She can’t wait to walk through the turnstiles.

“Just getting into that stadium,” Mantyla said, of her anticipation. “I can’t wait to get in there. It’s just absolutely unbelievable.”