From the bench-clearing brawls of the late 1890s to write-ups in The Washington Post, the so-called Holy War between the University of Utah Utes and the Brigham Young University Cougars is one of the most celebrated rivalries in college sports. Of course, this isn’t news to anyone — red or blue — but this consummate rivalry claims to be more than just wins and losses.
Supposedly, this blood feud is representative of not only a disparity in athletic prowess, but of the cultural disconnect between the U and the Y — a disconnect that begs us to bleed red yearly. It’s as if to say that as a state-sponsored university, the U embodies the freer, more progressive side of a centuries-old battle between church and state.
To an extent, it’s true. U students aren’t burdened by an Honor Code. Men sport flashy chin-length hair, and women roam the halls of the Language and Communications Building with purse straps slung haphazardly between their breasts. It’s enough to make any Cougar blush.
These superficial discrepancies are supposed to speak to the larger truth that BYU students are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we are secular. We encompass the socially liberal side of a state that they have made perpetually red — oh, the irony. As we stand preaching from our so-called-godless pulpit, the campus is littered with rhetoric damning gay marriage and the like. Students continue to demand content accommodations in class, despite the obvious drain on our “liberal” marketplace of ideas. Are we so dissimilar?
When it comes down to it, we all know that a majority of U students and supporters alike are LDS, conservative or both. A well-publicized and much-celebrated rivalry garners media attention for both red and blue, as well as secures our standing in the annals of history. Let us not pretend that the Holy War we wage mirrors a divisive and conflicted society in any way. We might vent our frustrations by donning red face paint, but it won’t change the fact that this institution is indeed the spawn of Brigham Young.
That certainly isn’t to say this trumped-up division is without merit. If we can compete against the Y with violent fervor to collect more canned food for the hungry, then I would say the battle has been legitimized.
The spirit of competition is what makes college sports — and college itself for that matter — exciting, dynamic and worth our time. And if the U and the Y need to inflate this enmity into a microcosm of a modern struggle of politics and culture to add validity to their cheering sections, then so be it.