It isn’t a rare occasion when Pat Yarber dons black and gold athletic apparel. Yarber, a diehard Vanderbilt fan from Nashville, Tenn., can be found wearing the colors often — but when he is, ‘Vandy,’ not ‘Vandal’ comes to mind.
Philip Vukelich | Argonaut
Pat Yarber, a legally blind college football fan, watches the Vandal game against Old Dominion Saturday in the Kibbie Dome. The Dome was his last stop out of 125 FBS stadiums.
That wasn’t the case Saturday, when Yarber stepped out onto the turf of the Kibbie Dome wearing an Idaho sweatshirt and hat. The applause he drew during the second quarter, from the 15,000 fans on hand for the Vandals’ game against Old Dominion couldn’t have been more deserved.
Because for Yarber, it wasn’t just another ticket stub, another game program on Saturday.
The man who has quite literally seen it all as far as college football goes, ended a 35-year long journey at the Kibbie Dome — where Yarber checked the 125th FBS stadium off his long list. He has now seen a game at every FBS venue.
The Kibbie Dome didn’t just happen to be the final stop for a college football fan overzealous than most. Yarber actually planned it that way.
He called the Dome college football’s most unique atmosphere.
“I knew for one thing I wouldn’t get rained on, but it just looked like such an unusual venue,” said Yarber, who was on the Palouse for an Idaho vs. Washington State game at Martin Stadium many years ago. “When I decided to complete the tour I told myself, ‘OK it’s going to be in Idaho — in Moscow.'”
Yarber’s adventure was never a task, a hobby that held a sense of urgency — that is until a few years ago. Diagnosed with retinis pigmentosa more than 30 years ago, he is classified as legally blind. That, coupled with his more recent diagnosis of macular degeneration, a condition that normally affects older adults, has sped things up for Yarber.
The diseases affect his vision in different ways. One limits his peripheral vision, and the other his central.
“It’s about like taking a right hook and an upper cut in a boxing match — I mean one of them is going to knock you out,” he said.
This season, he’s seen games at East Carolina, San Diego State, Middle Tennessee, Buffalo and Georgia Southern, to name a few.
Though the Tennessee man still calls Vanderbilt Stadium home, Yarber has made the rounds.
From the hedges at Georgia, to Touchdown Jesus at Notre Dame, to Chief Osceola at Florida State to USC’s Song Girls — Yarber has soaked in the traditions that make college football such a hot commodity for five months of the year.
By the time most had woken up on Saturday, Yarber was already part of another tradition — ESPN’s College GameDay. ESPN crews had filmed Yarber in his Nashville home and at the San Diego State vs. Fresno State game he attended on Oct. 26.
Tom Rinaldi of ESPN conducted an exclusive interview with Yarber in Nashville. The dialogue between the two revealed much about Yarber’s attitude toward his condition, which has continued to worsen.
“He (Rinaldi) said, ‘Now Pat, I’m going to get very serious here with you for a minute,’ he said, ‘This is such a great story, you’re so articulate, you’re so bright, you have such a great memory,'” Yarber said. But he said, ‘In a way it’s kind of sad,’And I said, ‘Maybe to you. There’s nothing sad about it to me.'”
Yarber isn’t one to gripe.
“I guess he wanted to see if I felt sorry for myself, or about my situation,” Yarber said. “I’m having the time of my life, I basically do what I want to do, I just have limitations … It’s not sad to me, I see people that are in horrible shape.”
Saturday in the Kibbie Dome, Yarber was doing exactly what he wanted to do. The 53-year-old was treated as a royal guest, spending the majority of the game in Athletic Director Rob Spear’s private suite. Between the suite and field, he was shipped back and forth to the press box and other areas of the stadium for radio interviews and meet-and-greets among other things.
In between, he was the same Pat Yarber, strapped with a pair of binoculars and Walkman radio — both of which help him visualize the game better.
The road probably hasn’t come to a complete stop for Yarber, as much as it has taken a slight detour, however.
“This is the final stop, for now,” he said.
With four Football Championship Subdivision squads making the jump to the FBS in the next few seasons, that will be four more stadiums to add to Yarber’s bucket list.
He is also an avid Nashville Predators fan and has been to more than 800 NHL games and might not have been joking when asked how long he’d gone without seeing a sporting event.
“Probably, a day,” he said.
But it’s college football that holds the true key to his heart, and has since his first game in 1979, a Vanderbilt loss to Georgia on Homecoming at Old Dudley Field.
When Old Dominion, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern join the FBS ranks in 2014, expect Yarber to hit all three — eyesight permitting.
“Fortunately these three are on my side of the country, they’re all states that border Tennessee,” he said. “As long as they keep adding them on and I can do it.”
Theo Lawson can be reached at [email protected]