I grew up in Murray, at the base of Big Cottonwood Canyon and about ten miles south of the University of Utah.
Some of my earliest and favorite memories consist of watching Utah football games with my family.
In 2010, my family and I piled into my grandpa's basement, which had not been redecorated since 1986, to watch one of the greatest BYU-Utah rivalry games of all-time. To prepare for the game, I got a red marker and wrote "UTAH" on my bare chest, but it read "HATU," because my 8-year-old self didn't understand that what I see in the mirror is flipped from what other people see.
Going into the fourth quarter, Utah trailed 13-0, but came back to lead 17-16 with four minutes left in the game. BYU staged the perfect drive down the field, setting up a 42-yard field goal for Cougar placekicker Mitch Payne.
BYU got off a clean snap, got the hold down, but forgot one thing: Utah defensive back Brandon Burton. Burton jumped the snap perfectly, cleared the edge blocker, and blocked the kick. He blocked the kick!
My grandpa's box television set was not in HD, and the old Mountain West Network was one of the worst TV channels in the history of college football, so we had to really lean in to see what had actually happened. Little did we know, we had just seen one of the greatest moments in Utah football history.
The week leading up to the game was always a hot topic at recess — and eventually homeroom. From third grade to graduation, Utah never lost. I grew up in a golden age of Utah football fandom. One of my good friends Kaden was the only kid in our friend group who cheered for the Cougars. Coming back to school on Mondays was hard for him during Utah's nine-game winning streak. A year after we graduated, he finally was able to see BYU win, making up for twelve years of teasing and taunting from our friends.
Now, I attend BYU. I work for BYUtv sports and I am a writer for The Daily Universe. I am surrounded by BYU fans and athletes every day. I have seen firsthand both sides of the rivalry. I've crossed enemy lines, if you will. I've come to love a lot of my BYU classmates and have enjoyed covering BYU athletics.
For most of my life, I have been surrounded by civil discourse and friendly banter regarding the rivalry, but in the days following BYU's unbelievable comeback Saturday night, my social media feed has been bombarded by stories of physical altercations between fans wearing red and blue, the story of BYU's cheer coach being knocked unconscious by a water bottle flung onto the field, and of course, the remarks made by Utah athletic director Mark Harlan. It was a bad look for the rivalry. It was a bad look for Utah.
But this is not a one-off occurrence.
If we want to talk about cheerleaders, the most infamous Holy War cheerleader incident up to this point came in 1999, when a BYU fan jumped onto the field and fought a male Utah cheerleader.
Water bottles on the field? We saw after the 2013 game, when BYU fans rained trash onto the refs after they were dissatisfied with their officiating. Between that and the trash thrown on Saturday, those are two black marks on the historic rivalry.
My dad, who was in the drumline of Utah's marching band, had to use cymbals to protect himself from the snowballs (and the occasional ice chunk) that were thrown by opposing fans.
Members of the BYU marching band also reported to having their fair share of slurs and expletives thrown their way when they played in Salt Lake.
Take it from a guy who has spent his whole life surrounded by the rivalry and has now spent his time around both teams: No one fan base is more "classless" than the other.
If you look on X (formerly Twitter) today, you'll see a plethora of accounts that make up BYU's online mafia calling the University of Utah and their fans classless. It is the same verbiage that Utah fans threw BYU's way in 2015 when BYU guard Nick Emery was ejected for clocking Utah guard Brandon Taylor in the head. The same verbiage that was used to describe Utah players for shoving Mitch Payne after his potential game-winning field goal was blocked. It goes in circles.
I love the rivalry. I think it is great that fans get emotional over who will come out on top every year. I love the passion that stems from sport. But to claim that a group is morally superior to another because they wear red or blue is comical. To put down an institution as a whole because of the on-field product that its athletics produce is pointless.
Both BYU and Utah are well-respected academic institutions, ranked in the top 50 of Wall Street Journal's college rankings in 2023. Both head coaches have ties to the other university. Kyle Whittingham was a star linebacker for the Cougars in his playing days and Kalani Sitake was the defensive coordinator for Utah under Whittingham. The amount of interfamilial ties within the rivalry is unlike any other in the country.
Amid all the stories of fighting and chaos last weekend, there were fans of both schools who tailgated together. There were fans with inter-fandom marriages and families. There were many Utes who were respectful to the Cougars and vice versa.
The comments made by a heated Mark Harlan after Utah's loss will be added to the list of ugly and shameful Holy War moments from the last hundred years, but it is a long list.