"Our Program Is Bigger Than The Rivalry – Kyle Whittingham"
That what the latest comment that the end is at hand for the the Holy War, this time in a Yahoo Sports article.
A couple of people have spoken out against ending the rivalry such as my good friend at Block U and Kurt Kragthrope at the Salt Lake Tribune. And truth be told, a few years ago, I would have agreed with them and thought that not playing BYU would be unthinkable. But then 2007 came.
2007 was a great year as on August 20th I got married to a wonderful woman. And on November of that year I took her to her first and last trip to Provo to see the BYU-Utah game. If you recall the 2007 game, it didn’t end well. Brian Johnson didn’t have a shoulder, we had a shot to win except for a mistake in the secondary followed byt two truly horrificly crap Pass Interference calls. But that game was significant me for another reason. It was the year I decided I didn’t like the rivalry anymore.
My wife isn’t from Utah, had never met a BYU sports fan and while she’s kind enough to tag along and enjoy the experience, doesn’t have a whole lot invested in the Utes. She isn’t the passionate idiot that I am. So it was interesting to see her go from having no opinion and an open mind about BYU fans, to screaming at people in the parking lot, “What Makes You People Think It’s Ok To Act This Way.” While it was a banner day for the Zoobs in terms of behavior, two incidents stood out.
1. My friend who was sitting behind us screamed the work Bitch. A BYU fan we named Angry Guy, stormed up the stairs screaming that BYU was a family environment and that Angry Guy was going to kick my friends ass to prove just how family friendly things are.
2. My wife and I were walking back to the parking lot when a middle aged male BYU fan screamed in her face that Utah sucked, not mine, hers. An altercation ensued which led to her comment from above.
It was after that incident that I started to re-evaluate everything about the rivalry. First I swore I’d never go to Provo for a game again, which wasn’t hard because I knew I’d never get my wife back. And second I started thinking about how this rivalry makes me feel, and I don’t like it. I hate losing and I don’t really enjoy the winning. While I’ve never sunk to the levels of the D-Bags I talk about above, I’ve done a couple of things I’m not proud of.
I think there are some things about this rivalry that make it different from others and not in a good way. There are too many religious overtones that zealots on both sides of cultural issues in Utah use to exploit. I think the fact that BYU dominated for so long has led to a lot of nastiness on both sides. Utah fans are looking for eternal payback and BYU fans have never been able to handle Utah Football becoming better than them.
And none of that mentions the fact that the rivalry doesn’t do anything for us anymore. Winning that game doesn’t help us and losing it can hurt. And as long as BYU continues to decide to walk this strange path of independence, that isn’t going to change. Why would we willingly be someone’s big game when we’re trying to get to the Rose Bowl? Kurt Kragthorpe tried to play the ticket sales reason, but we had the same renewal rate last year without BYU and USC. Utah football doesn’t need BYU to sell tickets. We’re all growds up.
Plus it’s not like BYU is making any concessions to keep this going as well. Our hands have become largely tied with scheduling issues and if this game is so very important to BYU one would think they might do something to help continue it. But they won’t even make the simple concession of two straight years at Utah. It looks like they don’t exactly want it either.
So when you look at everything, it’s clear this rivalry is in need of a nice long break. Utah doesn’t need BYU on the schedule to sell tickets anymore and BYU claims they’re happy with what they’re doing. If it’s so, let’s end the nastiness and both go our separate ways. If a time presents itself to bring in back in a better way, great, if not…
So Be It