Let’s get this straight, I like college football. I pull for Utah, but I do not “hate” BYU’s football team.
I do not like it when east and west coast, or deep south, midwest or southwest media types act as if this part of the country does not exist when it comes to college football. Therefore, I root for Mountain West and WAC teams to do well when they venture out of conference to take on schools from the snotty disctricts of the football nation.
It gives me a lot of pleasure to see a Wyoming, for example, whip up on a Virginia in the first game of the season for both teams and then to watch the Utes crush Wyoming while Virginia has gone on to a bunch of wins and is now poised to play Virginia Tech this weekend for a berth in the ACC championship game.
This tells me that we have good football teams out here in the desert and mountain west, teams that could stomp most ACC, or other “BCS” conference squads. On any given Saturday, I think the Utes, BYU and Air Force can beat most of the other teams in the country, save for all but a select handful of five or less.
This means that I want to see BYU win games against teams like Arizona (they did) and UCLA (they did not) so that there is some respect paid to this region and the brand of football it produces. Do not ask me what happened in that Tulsa game, though. That was pathetic.
Furthermore, as a Utah fan, I do not want BYU to come into the annual game a beaten down shell of a team. I want the Utes and the Cougars to be good. I want them to play a great game, a classic. Then, I just want the Utes to win.
Yet, it will not kill me if they don’t.
I thought the ending to last year’s game was simply amazing, although I did think the Utes blew it by not sending a blitzing army after John Beck. Had they done so, they would have sacked him and ended it, as opposed to allowing him to freely scamper around for an hour or so before tossing the winning lob.
I thought at the time, “Damn! What a play!” Then, I was upset at the Utes for the stupid defensive call. But, I then found myself happy for Beck, who’d long been the target of his own fans’ wrath. It was appropriate payback for the kid.
However, when I discussed my feelings over the subsequent week with a few Ute fans whom I happen to know, they looked at me as if I’d contracted some sort of terminal mental disease.
“What? You what?” I got asked when I said I thought the Utes had the loss coming to them because they didn’t pressure Beck.
“What does that have to do with anything?” one friend barked at me. “It’s fuc-ing BYU!”
I had another acquaintance, a BYU fan who lives around the corner, walk up to me and say, “Ha! Guess we kicked your ass!”
I was totally appalled. I said, “Eldon, I have never heard you talk like that before. What’s up with that?”
He said, “You know, in the game. The Cougars kicked your ass!”
“I didn’t play,” I said.
Thus, we arrive at the real weight behind this annual get together we call the Utah – BYU game: Hatred.
That’s right. This is the week where people get a “free pass” (they think) to say out loud what they have been thinking about each other all year long.
My neighbors get to think I am getting my non-Mormon ass kicked if BYU wins the game. They’ll hide inside until Monday if Utah wins, probably fearing that someone might walk up to them and say, “Hey, you just got your ass kicked!”
Utah – BYU. BYU – Utah. Hate Week is here!
The Mormons get to speak about all the sinning, sexed-up, disgusting, liberal, drunken louts they consider their non-Mormon “enemies” to be all the time – not just during game week. Then, the non-Mormons get to point at the Mormons and accuse them of ignorance, intolerance, illegal political manipulation, blind fealty to “idiots” like George W. Bush, environmental destruction, obesity and belonging to a “cult.”
All fun stuff.
Usually, when these concepts come up at times that fall outside of game – I mean “hate” – week, they are discussed in carefully coded rhetoric and terms.
For example, someone might say during non-hate week that Bobbie Coray, the liquor commissioner who proffered the idea to hide or obscure booze from the view of non-drinking restaurant patrons so as to not offend them is “short-sighted.”
However, during hate week, people just come out and say, “oh, that stupid Mormon broad. What else do we have to listen to from that moron?”
Remember, it’s the football talking.
Or, we might hear Paul Mero, the “right-wing lunatic institute director” (football talking) actually say what he thinks about the people who voted against the Mormon Publicly Funded Private School Bill, also known as the Voucher Proposition, Prop One or, simply, as “that Oreo thing.”
“Buttholes!”
Again, the BYU – Utah game makes this sort of discourse acceptable through midnight, November 25.
Other free shot examples:
Non-Mormons can refer to Mormon, male Whitebread legislators as: “homophobic, racist, animal-abusing bastards,” and draw laughs and shouts of “Yes!” from friendly audiences.
Mormons can call people who voted for Ralph Becker for Salt Lake City mayor, “Fags!” and “liberal evil-doers!”
Or, BYU fans can refer to Utah fans as “tehrist symptizers!”
While Utah fans can call BYU fans, “retards!” and their women “fatasses!”
Heat packing Mormon Second Amendment misinterpreters can smile, pat their pistols and say, “better watch out, you Godless little puke!”
While non-Mormon “pukes” can respond, at least to the men, by asking, “What, got a penis shortage?”
On it goes.
Personally, if I ran into Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, I’d ask him who is more insane – BYU or Utah fans? That based on his view that a mix of people (Mormon and non-Mormon, I suppose) voted down that Oreo thing, which he funded out of his own pocket, you know, from the money he makes off the highly profitable company he runs.
I do think I know who the guy who shoots endangered species so he can save them from extinction is rooting for Saturday. He’s clearly a “Zoo” guy.
I saw Governor Jon Huntsman is headed to Iraq this week with John McCain. He’s a smart guy. There will be a lot less hate on the streets of Baghdad this week then we’ll have around here.
Oh, my heck, that’s just the football talking again.
