By Andy Lohman

In late October of 1995, Paul Layne faced a dilemma. At age 41, his doctor had just informed him that he had the chicken pox. While the illness is more common in children, it is not unheard of for adults to come down with a case. But what really worried Layne was the possibility of missing an SMU football game.

"Luckily that weekend, we had a home game against Rice, it was in the old Cotton Bowl," Layne said. "It happened to be homecoming and it happened to be Halloween."

Layne had been to every SMU football game, both home and away, since he was a freshman in 1972 and he wasn't about to let this stop him. So in the Halloween spirit he dressed up as a scarecrow and wore a hat to hide the marks on his face. He sat on the far side of the stadium away from the other fans so he wouldn't spread the pox to anybody else and watched his beloved Mustangs battle Rice.

Decades later, Layne still hasn't missed a game. Saturday's contest against Houston Baptist will be his 500th consecutive SMU game, a streak that spans 46 years.

Layne is a Dallas man through and through. In fact, he lives four blocks down from the Dallas hospital where he was born. His parents started taking him to SMU games when he was just two years old, and started attending more consistently when he was six.

SMU was the only college Layne applied to, and his love for SMU football showed during his freshman year. As a sports reporter for the student newspaper, The Daily Campus, Layne would clap and cheer in the press box, a violation of the journalistic code of conduct.

"Our sports editor said 'Paul you can't do all that up in the press box. If you're going to do all that, you ought to try out to be a cheerleader down on the field,'" Layne said.

A year later, at the encouragement of his fraternity brothers who were already on the squad, Layne did exactly that.

"It was just a really great experience," Layne said of cheerleading during his junior and senior year. "We got to be best friends with all the people on our squad, the guys and the girls were like one big family."

The thought of a streak didn't cross his mind until much later.

"I had been going for 20 years or something and I thought 'well, you can't miss now,'" Layne said.

Over the course of 500 games, Layne has seen and experienced a lot. He fondly remembers the early 1980s when the Mustangs beat Texas on the road twice in a three-year span. In the early 2000s, he convinced his ex-wife to schedule her second marriage on a Friday night so he could attend the SMU game at Nevada on his way through Sonoma for the ceremony. He even traveled to Tokyo to watch the Mustangs beat Houston in 1983.

Some of the best memories came off the field. In the days of the Southwest Conference, Layne had traveled to Fayetteville to play at Arkansas, where fans often parked on locals' front yards for the game.

"They had a sign that said 'Parking $5' which was a little bit of money back then even," Layne said. "We pulled up to park and as soon as they saw that we had our SMU stuff on, they had already made the sign where they flipped it over and it said 'SMU Parking $20.' They had drinks and stuff so we went ahead and did park in their yard because we thought the novelty of that was pretty funny."

Walking through the hallways of the Loyd All-Sports Center, Layne ran into his old cheerleading teammate and roommate Bob Sharp, who currently serves as SMU's Director of Major Gifts. The two reminisced about the 1978 season where they took advantage of an Eastern Airlines deal that flew them across the country for three weeks. They saw SMU upset Florida, give No. 3 Penn State a scare and tie Ohio State, all on the road.

"We snuck a trip to Bermuda in there too!" Sharp reminded a smiling Layne.

Nowadays Layne can be found in row seven of section 103 at Gerald J. Ford Stadium.

"We used to sit higher up when we were at the Cotton Bowl, but when they moved here to campus they put me down lower and I got upset at first," Layne said. "As it turned out, I wind up loving it and it was the best thing they could have done putting us down low…I like being down low, I guess it has something to do with the old cheerleader thing."

From a small child to a student cheerleader to a successful realtor, SMU football has been a part of Layne's life every step of the way. In return, Layne has been with SMU football for 500 straight steps, with no plans of stopping.

"I get real pride, like I did when I put on my cheerleading shirt, putting on my shirt to go to the games that says SMU on it," Layne said. "I can't imagine being anywhere else on a Saturday than at the game."