SaltyDawg
Well-Known Member
I know some fans have said that Utah changing conferences is or could be the death of the BYU rivalry. They couldn't be more incorrect. Here is why...
The Utes are no longer trying to earn BCS stripes for the conference. This is pretty huge as far as the rivaly is concerned.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that found myself trying to force myself to root for BYU in out of conference games. Heck, I even found myself rooting for TCU late in the season because I wanted them to go undefeated- even though a couple losses would have meant the Utes won the conference.
Don't get me wrong, it was all head and not heart as far as rooting for BYU was concerned. For example, I was hoping BYU would beat Florida State for the sake of the conference. But when Florida State was taking care of business, my heart took over and started rooting for Florida State to score on every drive, and for a turnover on every BYU drive.
But make no mistake, I will NEVER root for BYU again. Now that I don't care about the MWC or their BCS aspirations, if I pay attention to BYU at all it will absolutely be to root against them. The only possible exception is if Utah is in contention for a national championship or something, and BYU is playing a team ahead of Utah in that race (or something like that).
The BCS was destroying this rivalry by forcing us to root for our rivals. Now that we are in a BCS conference, we don't have to worry about that anymore.
The rivalry that actually will get destroyed by this move is the budding TCU rivalry.
You may recall the Utes introduced their black uniforms during the TCU game a couple years ago. You may also recall TCU introduced their special use uniforms against the Utes last year (in front of the largest home crowd in TCU's history). This was turning into a great rivalry, between 2 great programs, and it will be dead in it's tracks if we stop playing them.
I would actually rather see the Utes play TCU every year than BYU. The Utas have got some pretty good players out of Texas recently and I would hate to see that go away. Plus, TCU fans don't live in some alternate reality and think they are a national powerhouse. Not that all BYU fans think that, but a lot of them certainly do.
I guess that doesn't matter though, because there is no way the Utes play TCU out of conference every year, especially if they don't play BYU.
Anyway, I'm sure most Ute fans will never root for BYU again, and BYU fans will never root for Utah again. So the rivalry will live on. Even if the teams stopped playing each other, and they will play each other every year, but even if they stopped, the rivalry would live in in all of our hearts.
The Utes are no longer trying to earn BCS stripes for the conference. This is pretty huge as far as the rivaly is concerned.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that found myself trying to force myself to root for BYU in out of conference games. Heck, I even found myself rooting for TCU late in the season because I wanted them to go undefeated- even though a couple losses would have meant the Utes won the conference.
Don't get me wrong, it was all head and not heart as far as rooting for BYU was concerned. For example, I was hoping BYU would beat Florida State for the sake of the conference. But when Florida State was taking care of business, my heart took over and started rooting for Florida State to score on every drive, and for a turnover on every BYU drive.
But make no mistake, I will NEVER root for BYU again. Now that I don't care about the MWC or their BCS aspirations, if I pay attention to BYU at all it will absolutely be to root against them. The only possible exception is if Utah is in contention for a national championship or something, and BYU is playing a team ahead of Utah in that race (or something like that).
The BCS was destroying this rivalry by forcing us to root for our rivals. Now that we are in a BCS conference, we don't have to worry about that anymore.
The rivalry that actually will get destroyed by this move is the budding TCU rivalry.
You may recall the Utes introduced their black uniforms during the TCU game a couple years ago. You may also recall TCU introduced their special use uniforms against the Utes last year (in front of the largest home crowd in TCU's history). This was turning into a great rivalry, between 2 great programs, and it will be dead in it's tracks if we stop playing them.
I would actually rather see the Utes play TCU every year than BYU. The Utas have got some pretty good players out of Texas recently and I would hate to see that go away. Plus, TCU fans don't live in some alternate reality and think they are a national powerhouse. Not that all BYU fans think that, but a lot of them certainly do.
I guess that doesn't matter though, because there is no way the Utes play TCU out of conference every year, especially if they don't play BYU.
Anyway, I'm sure most Ute fans will never root for BYU again, and BYU fans will never root for Utah again. So the rivalry will live on. Even if the teams stopped playing each other, and they will play each other every year, but even if they stopped, the rivalry would live in in all of our hearts.
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