When I have a slow day I always like to come over here to your board. I'm a Y guy. Actually I graduated from Boise State and went to the law school at the Y. I have three sons at the Y but I'm also in a bishopric at a U of U ward, know four of the players on the team and really like the students there in general. The Christensen twins are GREAT guys and Steve Mckane is one of the funniest guys I've ever met.

Anyway, what is it about you people? You always take such great pleasure in telling each other why you can't stand BYU and then cite some kind of epiphany where you see the light ("some mean Y students threw jolly ranchers at my head!" or "there just was somehing not right about them"). Do you know how sactimonious you sound when you bear these little testimoies to each other?

Hey, I know alot of the Y fans are insufferable, and start talking National championship after two games, and indulge in tons of what if's. But the great majority of the students down there don't care about the rivalry. The same can be said about the U. So what's my point? You're "seeing the light" sounds like a lame excuse to indulge in condescending stereotypes about others. Can't we all just be fans without getting so personal?

P.S. Good luck on the smurf turf, and be ready for another dose of Bronco magic!

It's BYU, not us, that first raised The Rivalry to the level of a Jihad. Growing up in Utah in a family populated by BYU followers I always heard how important it was for BYU to win because BYU sports was "such a great missionary tool." Last year when BYU announced Pinnegar's oral commitment, Fehlberg and Clevelend said that the first order of business was to recruit all the good Mormons boys who, as good MOrmons, should want to come to BYU and help their Chuch. Echoing this sentiment, Roger Reid told Chris Burgess that he had "let down six million people" when he signed with Duke. When the Burgess' quoted Reid (who was doing nothing more than restating the widespread belief that a mission of the basketball team was literally to save souls), it so embarrassed BYU's President and AD--who, ironically, were troubled by the impact the ensuing hue and cry would have on the sports programs' missionary work--that they lopped Reid's head off six days before Chrismas (after he came bearing gifts to the AD and President), in order that millions of souls "would not dwindle in disbelief."

If your post is referring to mine below (see "...dark side" post-tounge in cheek I might add, although you probably took it literally), then I feel sorry for you. The fact that you are in a bishopric (I don't care where) and are catagorizing my (our) feelings toward BYU as petty is completely absurd, and once again, arrogant.

You trivialize why I (we) don't like BYU.

I DON'T LIKE TO CONFORM!

How else would you like me to put it? Is there a kinder, more gentle way to phrase it? Isn't it found in the LDS belief structure and doctrine that EVERYONE was given free agency to choose?

So I do choose, and then you sit there in your "seat of judgement" and castigate me for not wanting to follow in lock-step what everyone else is doing (at BYU). I've got news for you bud, BYU isn't for everyone (does Ronnie Jenkins and Ron Seleaze ring a bell).

The only one who seems to be taking this matter more seriously than it should be is you. You look down on me (us) because of our beliefs. I don't really care what you think about me, because my parents (BYU grads) are still going to love me unconditionally even though I am a Ute.

One other thing. What planet do you reside on? Where did you come up with the idea that BYU students don't care about this rivalry? That has got to be one of the funniest, if not stupidest things I have ever heard. The rivalry game at R-E always brings thousands upon thousands of BYU fans/students out of the woodwork for this one unimportant (as you would call it) little game. I guess you're right, they don't care very much down there.

Brother Bishopric, I think you need to re-evaluate how you look at others with different beliefs; even those within your own church. Being Mormon and cheering for BYU isn't a birth right. I'm sure God doesn't give a rat's ___ about sports, let alone what BYU does on the playing field. I think he cares a little more about the starving children in Africa, wouldn't you agree?

BTW, have you ever counted how many prophets and apostles that hold degrees from our prestigious and well-respected university, including our current prophet and counselors?

Chew on that for awhile.

In the meantime, I'll make sure I don't have a PPI or temple recommend interview scheduled with you because you'd probably revoke it because of my beliefs.

You sound like a fairly introspective person, and also that you have spent a considerable part of your life in the Utah culture. So it surprises me that you would not understand what is going on here. From the very beginning, the culture of this state has been grounded in a sense of persecution ? a sense of ìitís us against the world.î This underlying attitude finds many different outlets of expression, including this forum. And one of the primary themes of shared-experience that is unique to the ìUte Fanî culture is a disdain for BYU. As a Ute fan, I can strongly relate to many of the sentiments that have been expressed about BYU. I used to cheer for BYU as an adolescent, and even after I decided to attend the U. I still considered BYU my second-favorite team. But then I became ìpersecuted.î I went on a mission to southern California, and many members of the church there seriously questioned my ìworthinessî when they found out I was a Ute fan. And after I returned home, several people who had known me my whole life asked my parents if I had ìfallen awayî from the church since I went to the U (instead of the Y, like my older brothers had done). This kind of treatment began to engender anti-BYU feelings. I didnít ìseek outî these feelings but felt that they were thrust upon me by the intolerant ìBYU attitude.î

Now I understand that the opposite is also true. My wifeís side of the family are almost all Ute fans, but she has one niece that went to BYU. One day this niece commented about how intolerant Ute fans were. Like you, she felt that most BYU fans were indifferent about the rivalry, and usually rooted for the Utes when they played anyone else. But that Ute fans were extremely intolerant of BYU and treated their fans very poorly. (I found this statement highly ironic because it was exactly the inverse of the feelings I started to have on my mission and afterward.)

So now that I am older, I have come to realize that neither side is really responsible for the feelings of the other. The rivalry feeds on itself and perpetuates itís own myths. And both myths are grounded in the same inherent sense of persecution. So BYU fans and Ute fans will always find some way of offending each other, whether they intend to do so or not. Fortunately, they can always talk to each other about the Jazz.

;-)

-- GO UTES !!!!!!!!!!

I don't actually hate BYU, I hate their fans. I don't hate all their fans, but I hate the arrogant assholes like this poster. I can't believe that a Mormon bishop would actually get on here and post this drivel. Can you imagine a Catholic priest posting this kind of stuff on here? I can't. Mormons as a whole are a wonderful, kind people and I have many LDS friends. But BYU seems to feed some of them into a frenzy of righteousness, arrogance and snobbery, and then they feed off of each other. If they could only see themselves as the rest of the world sees them. Try opening your mind. I've enjoyed reading why some of the LDS Ute fans on this board love our team. Who the hell are you to come in here and shoot down their passion? You are the epitome of why BYU sucks. The reasonable BYU posters on this board like MD in MT, albertablue, etc are probably embarrassed by your affiliation.

: The reasonable BYU posters on this board like MD in MT, albertablue, etc are probably embarrassed by your affiliation.

I'm only embarrassed that you are insinuating that I am a doctor and live in Montana. It's MT (my first and second initials) in MD (The Free State).

No offense to any doctors out there in Utedom, but my brother-in-law, who used to be a really reasonable and nice guy, turned into King Asshole the moment he got out of his residency and started making huge-o bucks. While I wouldn't mind making that kind of salary, my close association with this particular doctor makes me kind of defensive. ;^)

On the subject of jonboy, I'm thinking that he primarily phrased his points very poorly and didn't intend to come off as arrogant as he sounded.

My own contribution to this discussionis the following. I came to my allegiance to the Cougars as a freshman at BYU. I grew up in California in the days when the only time you could see the games was 1) the Holiday Bowl, and 2) at the Stake Center (20 minutes away, always on Saturday mornings when I usually had other stuff going on) My parents' mixed allegiances (Ute mother, Cougar father) also were a general hindrance to my forming any sort of attachment to the Cougs or the Utes, for that matter. I cheered for the Pace Mannion-led Utes back in the Big Dance in '77 or '78 (do I have those years right?), just as I cheered for the Cougs in the Holiday Bowls (I missed most of the big comeback during the Miracle Bowl win over SMU, but did catch the McMahon to Clay Brown game-winner).

When the time came, I applied to BYU, the U of U, and a few other schools, and got accepted to all of them. My decision to go to BYU turned on the rather flukey timing of when I had to commit to one or the other school and the notification I got on whether I had gotten into on-campus housing (family rule: "Our kids always live in the dorms their first year.") Since BYU wanted to know if I was coming a good month before any of the other schools would tell me if dorm housing was available, I became a Coug. (But for that issue of timing, I just might have been a Coug-hating Ute. Ahhhh, Fate.)

My rommate and two of his friends who lived on the floor above us, all went to East High and were avid Ute fans. I don't recall their reasons for coming to the Y, but they all wound up cheering for the Cougars during the football season (the Snow Bowl game in Provo), largely because they had made the sacrifice to go to Provo, therefore, the Cougs had better damn well make that decision a good one. Lakei Heimuli, Robbie Bosco, and the rest proved up to the task, winning an interesting game by something like 42-27. I was pretty excited about Cougar football up to that point, but Heimuli's 80-something yard run in the fourth quarter was the moment that sealed my devotion.

After our missions, I wound up being the only one of the four guys to return to BYU, the other three all choosing for different reasons to transfer to the U (My roommate, a diabetic, left his mission early due to health problems and, not wanting to get too far behind in school, started taking night classes at the U and wound up staying. The other two wound up there because of 1) a girlfriend who became his wife, and 2) a better pre-med program. I think they both also preferred living at home (in Federal Heights, just to the left of the U))

Anyway, you now know the reason for my allegiance, as well as my epiphanic moment. I don't hate, or even dislike the Utes. I was really disappointed with their loss to Kentucky in the championship game two years ago and even had them picked for the Final Four in my pool last year (their performance last year is a good reason to hate the Utes--screwing up my pool like that :-) I do find myself enjoying their annual losses to the Utah States and Boise States, and have gnashed my teeth repeatedly as the Utes have beaten us in the last week of the season. But I find nothing reprehensible, disgusting, or abhorrent about Utah athletics.

All that being said, I still find it annoying to read the mischaracterizations of BYU and BYU students that occur on this board (just as I find the reverse on Cougartalk to be annoying). BYU certainly has its shortcomings as an institution, and I am not blind to them. But I think many of the criticisms leveled at the Y here are based primarily on bad experiences with sports fans, media accounts of "controversies on campus," and willful misinterpretations. Please don't take offense at that, since I think every person is guilty of drawing the wrong conclusions or willfully seeing things a particular way because of personal biases, whether that be in relation to a university, a country, a team, or just one particular individual. We're all human. But I do think that someone who has not attended BYU has no room to comment on "the way things are in Provo" without being challenged on it.

As a BYU alum, I can unequivocally state that academic freedom is not a myth at BYU, that there is great diversity of thought and action among the students (even if diversity of skin color is low), and that there is no "official party line" about BYU students being superior to students at any other university (that is, anybody who espouses that opinion has reached that conclusion without any assistance from anyone on the payroll of the university--surprise! They reached that conclsuion on their own).

It's an old line, but it bears repeating nevertheless: BYU is a private institution that focuses on undergraduate education in an environment that fosters not only academic learning, but spiritual growth as well. In order to accomplish that mission, the university has set particular standards of behavior for students and professors, all of whom are required to "sign on" to those requirements on an annual basis. While such standards are not the societal norm, they are certainly not onerus, and no one is coerced into accepting them. Those who choose to learn or to work at BYU do not do so in ignorance of the standards, Ronney Jenkins' protestations notwithstanding.

Hate BYU fans for thinking all the things we were thinking before Saturday night (ouch!), hate individual fans for their holier-than-thou attitudes, but don't hate BYU the institution because of ignorance about what the BYU experience is like. UtahDan has written here a few times about his experience at BYU, and I have carried away from his postings the message that BYU wasn't for him (and it's clearly not for everybody), but that he doesn't necesarily hate the school. I may be misrepresenting him, for which I apologize, but it seems to me, on hand of such evidence, that the vitriol that occasionally flows here finds its source in a misunderstanding or blatant disregard of reality, and that is what I think jonboy was addressing in his original post.

(Whew! Trust me to state in 10,000 words what might have been said in 100. At least New York gives me good company. ;^)

So Jonboy decides to venture into our neighborhood, disses some of our sacred cows in kind of a smarty pants sounding way, and a howling mob kicks his head in and beats living the living piss out of him.

Clearly Jonboy's view of the world and my own are quite divergent. A recurring theme of my posts is what a textureless, smarmy, self-righteous, overblown, and overrated place BYU is, and I approach The Rivalry with kind of a religeous ferver. A few of my posts have been so offensive to BYU adherants that they have been posted as links on the BYU board as exmples of Utes at their worst. Moreover, I reacted with a pointed response my own to Jonboy.

However (and with no disrespect to my cyberspace friends in our little web board community who responded angrily to Jonboy), I think that some of us may have overreacted to his post. In order for us to apprecieate his point of view, Jonboy found it helpful to describe for us a bit of his background. He said he graduated from BYU, has three sons there, is in the bishopric of a U of U campus ward, knows four football players who are part of his flock, and really likes them, one of them being very funny. Even though I take a back seat to no one in my disdain for BYU, I didn't see this as Jonboy wearing his religion on his sleave, but providing relevant information about his background. In some respects his post was actually quite funny.

The essence of Jonboy's post was that even though we criticize BYU adherants for being self-righteous, pious, narrow-minded and so on, we sound just like them when we bear our attest to our love for Utah and dislike for adversary (BYU). Jonboy added that The Rivalry is just a game, no more no less.

Clearly my own views are diverge largely from jonboy's. For starters, the reactions to jonboy's post themselves establish that The Rivlary is more than just a game. But while I disgree with him, I don't think jonboy has behaved sanctimoneously or reprehensibly, or brought shame on his religion or school.

Last modified .