This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Janalee Tobias, a longtime conservative activist and lifetime BYU fan, didn't get priority seats in the Cougar section at the Las Vegas Bowl because, she said, she hadn't made a big enough donation to the Cougar Club.
So she bought tickets that plopped her family smack-dab in the middle of the "rowdy, loud, obnoxious Ute fans," she told me.
One fan was particularly belligerent, she said, screaming every insult he could think of at BYU's football team and letting anyone wearing Cougar blue in his vicinity know his anti-BYU sentiments.
But he promised Tobias and her family he wouldn't spill his beer on them, actually making friends with them on a personal level while spewing venom toward the BYU world in general.
While he didn't douse them with beer, he did accidentally spill some of his bloody mary on them when he jumped up during an exciting play.
He profusely apologized, Tobias said, and offered to pay to dry-clean their coats. Tobias said that was unnecessary, that he was forgiven and that all was good in the world, especially since BYU was coming back from a 35-0 first-quarter deficit.
The man insisted that he buy Tobias and her family ice cream. He gave his date his credit card to accompany Tobias to a vendor and get the treats.
While at the ice cream stand, spectators couldn't believe that a woman decked out in Ute red was buying ice cream for a group of blue-clad BYU fans.
But, hey, BFFs have been formed under stranger circumstances than that.
If only Max Hall could have been there to see some camaraderie between a die-hard Ute fan and a sweet-spirited Cougar maybe he wouldn't have to hate Utah so much.
Perseverance pays off • I spent last week in Washington, D.C., where I was invited to witness the swearing-in of my friend, former Utahn Marc Sievers, who was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Persian Gulf country of Oman.
It was a cool experience, taking place in the Treaty Room of the U.S. State Department, with all the security clearances to get in the building tempered by offers of champagne to the guests waiting for the ceremony to start.
To be sure, a number of Utahns have been appointed to ambassadorships through the years. Tom Korologos to Belgium, John Price to Mauritius, Jon Huntsman to China and David King to Madagascar come to mind.
But Huntsman was Utah's governor at the time of his appointment, King had been a member of Congress, Korologos was a longtime successful Washington, D.C., lobbyist and Price was a big Republican donor.
What makes Sievers stand out is he was a career Foreign Service employee, working his way up through the trenches for 34 years after cutting his international-relations teeth as a University of Utah student and Hinckley Institute of Politics denizen.
The 1973 East High graduate has served as a diplomatic and political adviser at U.S. embassies in Algeria, Turkey, Iraq, Israel and Egypt.
He began his remarks at the swearing-in ceremony by speaking in Arabic to the Omani ambassador to the U.S. He then spoke in English for everybody else.