Borrowing words from that great guitar-strumming football fan, Jimmy Buffett, around these parts, there have been changes in football latitudes, changes in football attitudes.
Especially in the imbalanced among us.
I used to laugh at certain BYU fans who were over-the-top crazy regarding how good their football team was. They were devoted to the Cougars, to their cause, absolutely tethered to the success of their team, connecting their self-worth and identity to the outcomes of games played by 20-year-old athlete-heroes.
And man, they were ultra-sensitive, too, taking any kind of perceived slight or criticism aimed at their school or team as though it were targeted straight at them personally, giving little thought to whether said criticism was true or warranted.
A good number of such fans stretched being unreasonable to being complete jackasses.
That seems like it was a long time ago.
The script has flipped to … You-Know-Who. Utah has a burgeoning group of hyper-sensitive types, people who wear crimson but fit the same profile.
It still exists in some BYU corners, but those corners have shrunk in recent seasons as the Cougars have struggled to maintain their excellence and relevance in a college football world that has been rough on them, that at some levels has rejected them and treated them with less respect than the program generally deserves.
Based on football alone, and the strength of the overall endeavor, BYU should be in a Power Five league. Would the Cougars float toward the top of any of the power conferences as presently or even as formerly constituted? Maybe in a few of those years, most of them in the deep past. Typically, without the recruiting advantages that come via top league membership, they’d have been or would be mostly mid- to lower-tier as insiders.
And that realization has shortened the numbers of BYU crazies. It’s pretty difficult to be overly bombastic when your team loses 27-0 to LSU on national television, never crossing the 50-yard line.
It’s been said that 10 percent of every fan base is like that, no matter what, and that’s a decent guess at a ground-floor number that is impossible to wholly ascertain. The other 90 percent are regular folks who enjoy football and heartily and healthily root for their school, their team, and talk a little smack accordingly.
But that first percentage appears to inflate, the second to deflate, the better a team gets.
And in the weird dynamic of college sports patronage in this state, particularly as it pertains to the Utah-BYU rivalry, the crazies have gained ground in a noticeable way among the Utes.
That’s definitely been my experience of late. For this column, I talked with many in-state media members, enough to mitigate any degree of individual bias one way or the other, about their communications with fans, and the fans’ communications with them. And it was darn near unanimous that on the Greater Stableford scoring system of fan obnoxiousness, the percentage on Utah’s side is growing.
Utah crazies have blown past the BYU nut-jobs. And I laugh at them.
Back in LaVell Edwards’ better years, it was definitely the other way around. The Cougars killed Utah, year after year, winning 19 of 21 games over one stretch. And while Utes fans hated the fact, the most aggressive among them grumbled, but they recognized what was happening and stayed, as LaVar Ball would say, in their lane.
A much larger number of BYU fans — though still a minority compared with the overall fan base — were arrogant, hateful and insufferable.
Now, the Utes have become the Cougars and the Cougars the Utes.
Utah, having won six straight games and 11 of 14 against BYU and having been included in the Pac-12 while BYU has been left out, is the superior program. What Kyle Whittingham has accomplished at Utah is laudable, the Utes ever moving toward higher notches of accomplishment and respectability. It’s impressive.
But that’s not enough for the crazies, some of whom have long memories, back to when BYU was winning a national championship, doing the in-state bullying and bragging. And the younger folks, those who don’t necessarily remember but who are embittered, nonetheless, are doing their screaming, as well.
They often are those who live on the internet, who communicate from a safe position behind a computer, made brave by way of anonymous screen names, feasting on the poor-sap Cougars fans whose program is now categorized as a lowly mid-major, a program that is sad-and-sorry and far, far inferior to the glory of Utah football.
And it’s not just that. Anything that has anything to do with BYU is inferior, categorically and uncompromisingly so. Compliment the Cougars, and the mob rages.
Crazy is as crazy does, whether it’s blue-on-red insanity or red-on-blue.
Reason would say fans, when they are on top, would let their school’s athletic success speak for itself without having to tangle themselves up with the lesser rival in such a manner, be it in person or on social media or in a comment section or on some message board.
Here’s the hard truth: These folks are obsessed with the other guys. Right now, even in its competitive inferiority, BYU lives in the Utes crazies’ heads. And they cannot get it out of that space. No amount of winning will free them.
Ironically, by constantly ripping and ridiculing the other guys, acknowledging nothing positive the other way, in that kind of mob mentality, those people reveal their own insecurities.
Nothing wrong with rivals being rivals. And that’s what the vast majority of fans of BYU and Utah are. Good folks who love having good fun, sometimes at the other guys’ expense. But in the incessant extreme, the boorish attitudes become cartoonish, even as the bashers revel in their own imagined sophistication.
Watch the fools bash on and bash away, blind to what everyone else can see.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.