BYU Football: Do Utah fans still see BYU as a rivalry game?
By Adam Gibby
BYU Football has lost its last nine games to the Utes with their last win coming back in 2008.
Utah fans like to claim that BYU is no longer their rival. I tend to stay off of Utah football stories, because quite frankly I don’t care, however there was one that caught my eye. It was an article by 247 Sports and it was a preview of Utah vs BYU game. While I struggled to get through the article with the writer claiming that BYU would be no problem to beat, that BYU is almost at the same level as Weber State, and how the great king Coach Whittingham has built the greatest team in the nation, I finally made it to the comment section.
Unlike BYU Football related articles that have about 50% Ute trolls commenting, there was only what appeared to be Ute fans in the thread. To my shock, a lot of fans were claiming that BYU was the 10th or 11th most important game on the schedule. While this is something that I would fully expect on a BYU page or a Twitter post, to see this on a Utah Football page was surprising.
To this point I’ve always thought it was just rivalry talk, or little brother talk. But could they be serious?
Some of the comments were saying that every Pac 12 game was more important because it could lead to the Pac 12 Championship (Aka a chance for a NY6 auto-bid). Others were saying that BYU couldn’t beat Utah, stating that close scores don’t matter because the better teams always finds a way to win. Finally, some even claimed that losing to Weber State would be better than BYU since it’s in week one, a week that is often deemed “forgiven”.
It could be real
Again, as a BYU fan, every single time I’ve heard this argument it has appeared to be trash talk, but in this context in a room full of only fellow Ute fans, it seemed like it could be true. Maybe margin of victory really doesn’t matter to the Utes, for them a win is a win. After all, the Deacons passing them the sacrament on Sunday have never seen the Utes lose to BYU.
This put me into a deep dive of how I feel towards certain teams not in BYU’s conference (nobody) and made me realize I feel the same way about Utah State, a team that has actually beaten BYU in the last few years. BYU fans don’t get hyped up much for this game because BYU is expected to win. If the Cougars win, sure there is some fun Ogden jokes or fun office bets paid off, but overall by Tuesday, BYU fans are already onto the next opponent.
Utah, a member of the Pac 12 feels that they should go 3-0 every year against their G5 opponents, like every other P5 team out there. I live in SEC country and can say that even Arkansas, a team that is the bottom of the SEC expects to win their three G5 games.
It hurts me to say this, but I actually think that this rivalry is one sided, at least for now.
Utah fans, if you read this please comment and let us know how you really feel.