For 40 years, it has been a familiar boom in the autumn sky8212;a signal telling everyone within earshot that the U football team just put points on the scoreboard.
The traditional single-gun salute has always come from a little red cannon affectionately dubbed Ute Thunder, but this weekend’s big rivalry game against Brigham Young University will likely be the last time anyone hears it.
Ute Thunder is owned by the Army ROTC program and the U’s military science department. A handful of ROTC cadets, known as the cannon crew, are trained each year to fire it from the Utah sideline whenever the team scores.
Members of this year’s crew said they were told at the start of the season by U Athletic Department Director of Operations Steve Pyne to pull the cannon off the field and begin firing it into the corridor at the southeast corner of the stadium.
Pyne said a new directive in the game management handbook for the Mountain West Conference required all schools in the conference to stop firing their game cannons in the direction of the officials this season.
“It wasn’t my decision,” Pyne said. “I didn’t tell them they had to move it outside the gates. I just told them it couldn’t be on the playing field when it was fired.”
Louis Barnum, ROTC Master Sergeant in charge of the cadets on the cannon crew, said he has complied and moved the cannon off the field this season, but still questions the explanation he has been given.
“BYU’s cannon is in the exact same place it was last year,” Barnum said. “So I’m confused as to why we are being singled out to change what we do.”
Pyne has recently been to the University of Wyoming, the University of New Mexico and San Diego State University and said he noticedthat all three schools had moved their game cannons off the field area.
Brandon Jack, a senior in flight operations at Westminster College who is enrolled in the U ROTC program, oversees the cadets who fire the cannon at each game. Jack said the crew made a decision to give up the tradition if they are forced to operate in a way that renders it essentially meaningless.
“We’ve had people come and talk to us and ask if we shoot the cannon at all,” he said. “They just can’t hear it and they can’t see it on the field. It’s almost like we’re not there anyway.”
Chris Brownlee, a junior in Middle Eastern studies and the ROTC cadet who is second in command of the Ute Thunder crew, said the BYU game on Saturday will probably be the last time the cannon will be at the stadium.
“That’s their call,” Pyne said. “We really have provided as much accommodation as we can.”
Brownlee said Pyne has offered explanations that don’t make sense to anyone involved.
“First he tried telling us it was a safety thing,” he said. “But that doesn’t make sense because it’s a blank shotgun shell.”
Brownlee said the crew places guards in front of the cannon to make sure no one walks past when it is fired and that in 40 years, there has never been an injury of any kind.
Pyne said the safety barrier Brownlee is describing typically intrudes into the media area each time the cannon is fired.
Ute Thunder is more than 100 years old. It was built in 1904 and used during World War I for training. It originally fired three pound lead balls with gunpowder, but has since been re-designed to fire 10-gauge shotgun blanks.
The cannon became a tradition at U home games in 1968. Six years ago, it underwent several thousand dollars worth of repairs to the firing mechanism and wooden wheels.