BYU vs Arizona State on Halloween: Running a Game Day and Trick-or-Treating in the Same Afternoon

Abigail Giordano Senior Writer, Provo.com

BYU hosts Arizona State on Halloween, and for a large share of Utah Valley that creates a scheduling problem rather than a bonus.

Trick-or-treating is not a flexible event. It happens when it gets dark, it happens in neighborhoods rather than at the stadium, and for families with young children it is one of the fixed points of the year. A home football game on the same day puts two immovable objects in the same afternoon.

The good news is that it is usually solvable. The bad news is that whether it is solvable depends on a piece of information that is often not available until close to the week of the game.

The Things That Are the Same Every Home Game

Four things do not change from game to game, and they are where most first-time problems happen. Rather than restate them here, they have their own guides.

The clear-bag policy turns people away at the gate at every single game, and it is the most common avoidable ruin of a Saturday. The parking fills earlier than almost anyone expects, and the lots that look closest are not the ones that clear fastest afterward. BYU is a dry campus, and that is not suspended for a big opponent or a night kickoff. And the stadium's own layout — where to enter, where the shade is, what the concourses are like — rewards knowing before you arrive.

Our BYU football game day guide, game-day parking guide and LaVell Edwards Stadium guide cover all of it properly. What follows on this page is only what is different about this particular game.

Everything Depends on the Kickoff Time

At the time of writing, the kickoff time for this game had not been set. That is normal — conference games are routinely assigned to television windows only a couple of weeks ahead — but it is the single most important variable for anyone trying to do both things on the same day.

The three realistic outcomes are very different:

An late-morning kickoff is the family-friendly outcome. A game starting around eleven finishes in the middle of the afternoon, which leaves the whole evening clear. You get home, change, and go out with the kids on a normal Halloween schedule.

An afternoon kickoff is the tight one. A mid-afternoon start finishes as dusk arrives, which is exactly when trick-or-treating begins. You would be leaving a packed parking lot at the moment you need to be in a neighborhood. Doable if you leave early, miserable if you do not.

An evening kickoff makes the choice for you. A night game and trick-or-treating are not both happening, and the sensible plan becomes going out early with the children and watching the game rather than attending.

The practical advice is to hold the plan loosely until the time is announced, and to have a version of the day ready for each of the three. Committing to tickets and a babysitter before the window is set is how people end up unhappy.

Costumes at the Stadium

People do wear costumes to a Halloween game, and it is one of the better atmospheres of the season. There are limits worth knowing before you build one.

The clear-bag policy does not take the day off, and a costume with a bag element is still a bag. A satchel, a basket, a pouch, a backpack as part of an outfit — all of it runs into the same rule that turns people away every other game.

Props are the other issue. Anything resembling a weapon is not coming in, and that includes obviously fake ones. Costume swords, staffs, tools and oversized accessories are all the kind of thing that gets stopped, and there is nowhere convenient to leave them.

Masks and full face coverings are worth thinking about even where they are allowed, simply because you are going to be in them for four hours, outdoors, eating and drinking.

The costumes that work at a stadium are the ones that are essentially clothing: something you can sit in, layer under, walk a long way in, and take through a security line without a conversation.

Halloween in Provo Happens Early

A detail that catches newcomers: trick-or-treating in Utah Valley neighborhoods tends to run early and finish early compared with what people are used to elsewhere. Families with small children are often out as soon as it is properly dark and home well before the evening is over.

That compresses the window further. It is not the case that you can leave a late-finishing game and still catch the tail of the evening, because in a lot of neighborhoods there is no tail — the porch lights go off.

If you are going to the game and trick-or-treating matters, the reliable move is to trick-or-treat first where you can, or to arrange for someone else to take the children out at the normal time.

Dressing for an October 31 Game

Late October in Provo is the hinge of the season. It can be mild and bright, and it can be genuinely cold with the first real weather of the year. Both are ordinary for the date.

Dress for the second one and be pleasantly surprised. Layers rather than one heavy coat, something for hands, and warmth you can put on in the fourth quarter when the sun is off the valley and the temperature falls quickly. This is especially true for a late kickoff.

For children in costume, the classic Halloween problem applies at a stadium too: a costume designed to look good is rarely a costume designed to keep an eight-year-old warm for four hours. Plan the layer underneath first and the costume on top of it.

Arizona State, and the Visiting-Fan Version of This

For Arizona State fans making the trip, Halloween weekend adds an element most road trips do not have.

The practical notes are the ordinary ones — our hotels near BYU guide covers where to stay, and rooms on a home-game weekend move earlier than people expect. Halloween itself does not put much extra pressure on Provo hotel stock, which is driven by the game rather than the holiday.

The thing that surprises visitors more is the temperature swing. A traveler coming from Phoenix in late October is arriving somewhere meaningfully colder, at altitude, with a large gap between the afternoon and the evening. That is a bigger adjustment than the calendar suggests.

Trunk-or-Treats Are the Thing That Usually Solves This

There is a local institution that visitors will not know about and that frequently resolves the whole scheduling conflict: the trunk-or-treat.

Across Utah Valley, congregations, schools, neighborhood groups and businesses run trunk-or-treats, where cars park in a circle, open their trunks, decorate them, and children go car to car instead of house to house. They are a fixture of the season here in a way they are not in most of the country.

The useful part is that a great many of them are not held on October 31 at all. They are scheduled on whichever evening in the surrounding week suits the organizers, frequently earlier in the week or on the preceding weekend. That means a family can genuinely have both: the trunk-or-treat on its own evening, and the game on the Saturday, without either one being compressed.

If you are trying to solve a Halloween conflict this year, the first question is not what time the game starts — it is which of your children's trunk-or-treats are on a different night. Quite often the answer makes the problem disappear.

The Neighborhood Question

Where you trick-or-treat matters more in Provo than in a lot of cities, because the housing is so uneven in character.

Parts of Provo are dense student housing, where trick-or-treating essentially does not happen — apartment complexes with no porches and a population that is not set up for it. Other parts are established family neighborhoods with exactly the kind of street you picture, and those streets get busy, including with families who have driven in from elsewhere.

If you live in a student-heavy area and you have young children, the practical answer is to go somewhere else, and most families here already know which neighborhood they head for. If you are new, asking a neighbor with children is faster than working it out on the night. Our Provo neighborhoods guide covers how the city is actually laid out.

Halloween Weekend Beyond the Game

The last weekend of October carries more than one event in this valley, and a game day sits inside a busier calendar than the date alone suggests.

Seasonal attractions are in their final weekend, which is when they are at their most crowded — the corn mazes, pumpkin patches and haunted attractions that have been running through October all end around now, and the last weekend is the busiest of their season. Anything you were planning to do besides the game is competing with that.

The events calendar carries what is scheduled, and our guide to things to do in Provo covers the standing options. The general warning is that Halloween falling on a Saturday concentrates everything into one day rather than spreading it across a week.

Arizona State, and What the Matchup Carries

This is a Big 12 conference game rather than a non-conference fixture, which means it carries standings consequences and a different intensity in the stands.

Conference games are the ones that decide who is playing for what in December, and a home conference game late in October arrives at the point in a season where the picture is starting to resolve. Crowds are more invested and more anxious than they are in September, and the stadium is louder for it.

Arizona State also travels reasonably, which matters for ticket availability and for the feel of the day. A visiting section with real numbers in it changes the atmosphere, generally for the better.

Making a Whole Day of It

If the timing works out, a Halloween game day is one of the better days on the fall calendar here, because the two events suit each other in tone.

The shape that works: game in the earlier window, home in the late afternoon, change, eat something real rather than stadium food, and out into the neighborhood at dusk. Downtown Provo also runs its own seasonal events around this part of the calendar, and our things to do in Provo guide and the events calendar carry what is scheduled.

The shape that does not work is trying to compress all of it around a late kickoff. Something gets cut, and it is usually the part the children were looking forward to.

If You Are Watching Instead

Choosing to watch rather than attend is a completely legitimate answer to this particular scheduling problem, and on Halloween it is probably the more popular one.

A game on television is pausable in a way a stadium is not. You can take the children out at the right time and come back to it. Our guide to where to watch sports in Provo covers the rooms if you want to be somewhere with a crowd, though bear in mind that a Halloween evening changes who is out and what those rooms are like.

A Plan That Works for Each Kickoff Window

Rather than wait and improvise, it is worth deciding now what you would do in each case, so that the announcement is a trigger rather than a problem.

If it is an early window. Treat it as an ordinary game day with an early start. Leave earlier than feels necessary because a morning kickoff compresses arrival into a short window. Come home in the middle of the afternoon, eat properly, and go out at the normal time. This is the easy version and it needs no compromises.

If it is an afternoon window. Decide in advance that you are leaving before the end, and be at peace with it. Park with the exit in mind rather than the entrance, which for this stadium means accepting a longer walk in exchange for a faster departure. Have costumes in the car rather than at home. That converts a scramble into a plan.

If it is a night window. Go out with the children first, at the normal time, and watch the game rather than attend. Or split the group — one adult takes the children out, the other goes to the game — which is the arrangement a lot of local families land on and nobody should feel bad about.

The failure mode in all three cases is the same: committing to attendance before the time is known, and then discovering the conflict too late to do anything about it.

What to Do With the Candy Problem

A small, practical thing nobody mentions. If you trick-or-treat before the game rather than after, you end the day with a house full of candy and children who are still excited about it, which is a different management problem from the usual one.

If you go to the game first and trick-or-treat after, you have tired children doing the fun part while exhausted, which is how the evening goes wrong.

Between the two, doing the children's part first and the adults' part second is almost always the better ordering, and it is worth arranging the day around that principle rather than around the football.

Getting Home Afterward

However the timing lands, the exit is the part of the day most people underestimate, and on Halloween it carries an extra wrinkle.

The stadium empties into the same few streets all at once, and that takes longer than the walk suggests. On a normal game day that is merely tedious. On Halloween it matters, because the streets you are driving through are also the streets children are crossing in dark costumes, in the dark, often not looking.

Drive as though that is happening, because in the residential blocks between the stadium and the main roads it is. Costumes are frequently dark, reflective material is rare, and small children step off curbs. This is the one night of the year where the ordinary post-game impatience is genuinely dangerous rather than just unpleasant.

If your route home runs through family neighborhoods, consider taking the longer way around on the larger roads instead. It is usually faster anyway once the residential streets are full of pedestrians.

The Short Version

BYU hosts Arizona State on Halloween, and the kickoff time — not set until close to the game — decides whether a family can do both. An early window leaves the evening clear; an afternoon start collides directly with trick-or-treating; a night game means choosing. Costumes are welcome but the clear-bag rule still applies to anything bag-shaped, and prop weapons will not get through the gate. Trick-or-treating in Utah Valley neighborhoods runs early and ends early, so there is no late window to catch after a game. Dress for a cold October night with a warm layer under the costume, and hold the plan loosely until the time is announced.

Related Guides

• BYU Football Game Day Guide
• BYU Football Game-Day Parking
• LaVell Edwards Stadium Guide
• Where to Eat Around a BYU Game
• Where to Watch Sports in Provo
• Hotels Near BYU
• BYU vs Notre Dame Game-Week Guide

Abigail Giordano

Senior Writer

Abigail Giordano is a senior writer at Provo.com covering student life, family resources, and community events across Utah Valley. Her writing focuses on making Provo more accessible and navigable for newcomers, students, and families — the practical guides that help people feel at home faster.

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