Years ago, I was in the parking lot of Cougar Stadium just before the start of a BYU-Utah game. Two guys were raging over something really important.

Note: I won't bother identifying which teams the idiots here supported. When it comes to pointless sports rivalry -- especially between BYU and the University of Utah -- there's plenty of stupid to go around.

First Guy: "In '62, we kicked your [ascots] by 24 points!"

Second Guy: "Bull[shorts]! That year we won by 30 points."

Things would probably have been fine if First Guy's wife hadn't decided to interject her thoughts. She said, "Um. ..."

That was as far as she got, because Second Guy punched her. I mean right out of her shoes. Other people joined the fray until it looked like a Sanpete County family reunion.

Helping to break it up would have been the responsible and even moral thing to do, but it was two minutes before kickoff.

My interest in sports is almost zero. I have just enough to lay tenuous claim to favorite teams. Hockey: Red Wings. Football: Steelers. Basketball: Not the Lakers. Baseball: Whatever T-ball team my grandson is on.

That said, I am a BYU fan by default. For more than 20 years, I lived close enough to Cougar Stadium (now LaVell Edwards Stadium) to hear the screaming. Rooting for the Cougars became a habit.

When I moved from Utah County to Herriman six years ago, I thought that would change. I was in Ute Country now. The proper thing to do for a guy of flexible allegiance was root for the U.

Can't do it. I tried, but it didn't work. Wearing red felt odd. And unless they were playing Wyoming, my heart never lifted when the Utes won.

I blame the holy-war aspect of the rivalry, or the interjection of theology, spirituality and God into a game that, no offense, wouldn't matter a damn if it didn't happen.

Sports allegiance is largely inherited, like being raised in a particular religion and then finding yourself unable to completely break away from it when you get older. Maybe I lived too long in Utah County.

Still, the nature of the rivalry is an interesting study in the church of sports. It's not hard to see how this became a holy war. You simply have to understand the mind-set between Provo and Salt Lake fans.

Here's the BYU angle. The truthfulness of one's team is divided along the lines of color. Blue vs. Red. More specifically, good vs. evil.

To quote the prophet Ulysses Everett McGill, "The great Satan hisself is red and scaly, with a bifurcated tail, and he carries a hay fork."

See? Red. Just like the University of Utah.

Conversely, BYU is blue. Blue is the color of the sky, which everyone knows is where heaven is, and coaches are sealed to their teams for halftime and all eternity.

The theology is much less complicated over at the U. You won't even need to take notes. Here it is: "BYU sucks!"

As important as their respective theologies are, both sides need to behave themselves. I can't see taking (or throwing, for that matter) a punch over which side of the stadium the Lord will sit on when he comes back.

Even though we all know it will be the blue side.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com.