When Oklahoma fans came to Provo to watch their Sooners play BYU, many of them walked away not just happy with their victory over the Cougars, but they also were impressed by the hospitality extended to them at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
The scenery was great. The stadium was great. The atmosphere was great. The free ice cream they were given was great. The demeanor of the fans was great. The Cougar band playing the OK school song was great.
That’s what many of them said.
One visiting Sooner said, “They are the nicest fans in the country.”
What exactly is going on at BYU these days?
Treating visiting fans like … like … well, actual human beings?
Strange.
Preposterous.
Unheard of.
Praiseworthy.
They are turning the college football world upside down in Provo. Trying to.
What are we to make of such developments? Was it an anomaly? Was it because the Sooners had never before come to play BYU at LES? Was it because there’s no real bad blood between these teams? Was it because it was a one-and-done deal, Oklahoma making a last run at a Big 12 championship before departing for the SEC? Was it because Cougar fans were reciprocating the niceness Sooner fans were demonstrating?
Whatever it was, whatever combination of things were at play, it was a refreshing display of decency handed to the folks who were there to cheer on BYU’s opponent, not its enemy.
Some college observers will laugh at this. They’ll ridicule it. They’ll say fans treating fans sweet not sour is an affront to authentic fandom, that if those fans had any self-respect, they’d do what they’re supposed to do — loathe the other guys, not love ‘em up.
That’s sports, after all. That’s the way they do it downtown. They swear at the visitors and their team. They tell them to do anatomically impossible things to themselves. They insult their mothers. They insult their mothers’ mothers. On especially rowdy occasions, they do more than throw insults, they throw punches or water bottles or urine bombs at them.
No. Not at BYU, apparently. Not anymore.
At LaVell’s place, they’re killing them with kindness. They’re making kindness cool. They’re doing unto others as they would have others do unto them. They’re loving their neighbors and their Big 12 rivals. They’re handing out hugs by way of complimentary cups of Strawberry Sundae Crunch and German Chocolate Chunk and Coconut Joy.
It’s cute. It’s damn near irresistible.
It’s one thing to sell visitors Cougar Tails and challenge them to eat the durn things, it’s another to straight give them Brownie Nut Fudge ice cream.
They don’t even do that at Notre Dame.
Some BYU fans and stadium employees have always extended friendliness to fans of other teams, fans proudly wearing their school’s colors, but they seem to be laying it on thicker now than ever before.
And it’s all good.
Is it sustainable? Can BYU butterfly against the tide in college sports, the swift current that somehow has determined that if you treat your foes like some subhuman species, it’s a sign of devotion to your own team?
Nobody expects such propriety in the muggy, vicious, anonymous mess made up of message boards and social media. But in person, even in the mob setting of a football game, BYU is attempting to tame its own inner beast.
The Cougars should be applauded for it.
The true test will come in seasons ahead, as rivalries develop in the Big 12, as some opposing players cheap-shot a BYU quarterback or as coaches disrespect the Cougar program as a whole, saying stuff like, “Well, my kids were going up against 30-year-old men today,” or, “Their offensive linemen were holding my boys all game long.”
And, of course, the biggest test will come around the next time the Utes and their fans come to Provo, with a league contest on the line, along with neighborhood and office and ward and familial bragging rights at stake. There have been times in the past when BYU fans have cratered badly, at least some of them, in the rivalry’s fog.
That’s when we’ll be absolutely certain that BYU and its home fans have truly turned over a new collective leaf, that they really are different, that they have transformed from demons lost in competition to angels, that they have, as the scriptural account says it, “put off the natural man and become saint(s).”
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
Follow @GordonMonson
