BYU-Utah Football Rivalry: Hatred Is the Exception Fueled by Media

I admit, I’m a sports radio junkie. I used to be interested in politics until I realized there’s never any resolution through the political process. As such, following politics only made me angry and frustrated.

But there’s always resolution in sports. Well, except for college football. But there’s a winner and a loser. There’s a scoreboard to point to.

As a result, I replaced my attention to politics with attention to sports, and sports talk radio became a major medium to fuel that sports fire.

But I HATE sports radio the week before the BYU-Utah rivalry game.

It’s always the same. Radio personalities fuel fans to anger against each other and drive purposefully divisive topics.

But what I hear spewed on Utah talk radio during rivalry week is completely contrary to my water-cooler sports talk during that time.

My circle of friends and associates is about 60/40 BYU to Utah. I have many good Ute friends. I’ve hired Utah fans in the past (and no, they were not the Utah fans outside Home Depot looking for a day’s wage), and they are/were as hard-working, honest and talented (or more) as any of the Cougars I’ve hired.

We never act the way the sports radio personalities claim BYU and Utah fans as respective groups act, namely with hatred, bile and ignorance.

And we rarely, if ever, say the kinds of things callers to sports radio do.

The majority of fans on either side don’t behave in this way, but the exception does—and they’re most vocal about it.

It’s sad that this fringe is the group sports radio, newspaper, online outlets and media in general paint as the norm.

The best illustration is in the actions of Eric Weddle, a Ute (whom as a Cougar fan I hope my children grow up to be like) whom after losing a heartbreaker to BYU on the Beck to Harline pass sought out John Beck, embraced him and congratulated him on the win. Class defined (Max Hall jokes here).

So you can talk about the rivalry with hatred and bile and refer to it as the Holy War like the media wants you to. But if that’s how you act, you’re the unreasonable minority.

In reality, we’re mostly decent on both sides about the rivalry, Max Hall and Brett Elliott excluded.

Ryan Teeples runs BYUUtahRivalry.com and can be followed at  twitter.com/ryanteeples.