This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated.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.

Former Utah governor Mike Leavitt once said the question he was asked more than any other while in that job was this: Who do you root for … BYU or Utah?

"I never answered," he said.

The politico wanted no part of Sophie's choice.

Most Utahns don't have to play that game. They come down hard one way or the other, with a few trickling toward Aggie blue. And, drawing an analogy between the two strongest emotions in the world — love and football loyalty — there usually are reasons. Those who say there's no explaining love — or loyalty — are incorrect.

Those reasons may vary in the specific, in individual importance from person to person, but stack them all up and, in either case, it's not all that mystical or magical, that irrational or inexplicable.

It's easier to love the kind over the cruel, the compassionate over the uncaring, the intelligent over the ignorant, the beautiful over the ugly. Hitting the point with a superficial hammer, many would take Gisele Bundchen over, say, Rosie O'Donnell or George Clooney over Danny DeVito.

You have to ask yourself: Who has the most to offer?

If that's the question, BYU might be on the short end of the stick. It might be Danny DeVito.

If college football fans in the state — especially younger ones who are less entrenched in yesterday's traditions, less entrenched in what school Mom and Dad cheered for — are looking for reasons to root, looking for reasons to get excited about and emotionally wrapped up in a rooting interest, looking for a program to which they can relate and identify with, Utah likely is the best bet.

That has nothing to do with any kind of bias, any sort of Cougar hate. It has everything to do with looking at what's real, looking at the best opportunity for a rewarding relationship, looking at what's most appealing. It's no coincidence that there are sons of former BYU football players who are signing with Utah.

The fact is, the Utes play in the Pac-12. That makes almost everything better. Last season, while the Cougars were playing, with a couple of exceptions, a bunch of teams nobody around here cares about, Utah was facing the likes of USC, UCLA, Stanford, Arizona State and Oregon — with national implications riding on nearly every snap.

That's the big time. It's a meaningful stage.

Whether the Utes won or lost — and they won more than they lost — what they did on the field mattered. It was worth caring about their performances and their outcomes.

Moreover, after they lost a game or two, they didn't lose their season. They still were battling for position in the Pac-12 South and wrangling for a shot at a decent postseason reward. While they ended up in the Las Vegas Bowl, they might have climbed higher, with a tweak, with a completed pass, here or there. They weren't that far off.

After the Cougars dropped their first game, they were locked into a bowl nobody had heard of. There was no positioning. There was no leaping over opponents in league standings. There was no stimulating the imagination. BYU simply flat-lined.

Bronco Mendenhall knows this. That's why he and Tom Holmoe are doing what they can to campaign for inclusion in a P5 league. Independence does not work. It might be preferable to being in the Mountain West, but, as the two of them have said, it's not sustainable. With the big money pouring into the programs of the included, BYU's remuneration and exposure from its ESPN contract doesn't measure up.

The Cougars are falling behind. Even worse, they're falling out.

They're trying to beef up their schedule, and succeeding to some extent, but there are two problems that will not go away: They have no rivals to compete with on a week-to-week basis, and, if they play better teams, they must find better athletes and better coaching to beat those teams. Playing them, in and of itself, turns them into Army, not Alabama.

Mendenhall and Holmoe seem to believe — desperately hope is closer to the mark — that there will be another shift in conference alignment, a shift that will include them. BYU deserves that. The Cougars have had enough success on the field and have a large enough national audience to have qualified.

A national survey taken a few years ago placed BYU's fan base at about 700,000 people. That number ranked ahead of 27 football programs already in the power leagues, including Utah.

But you have to wonder how long BYU will enjoy that advantage, particularly in state. The religion tie-in will always bolster the Cougars' foundation. But just like some of the LDS athletes who are drawn to Utah, in part, because of its clearly superior position in the Pac-12, more and more LDS fans — and non-LDS fans — in the state might lean that way, too.

Why wouldn't they? Intergenerational transmission of fan loyalty only takes a school so far. At some point, people look around and see greener grass next door. A poll taken earlier this year by Utah Policy asked respondents: If you had to choose just one team, who is your favorite sports team in Utah? Ute football tied the Jazz at 24 percent. BYU football was at 20 percent.

Yeah, those numbers aren't totally reliable or definitive, and because of the way the question was asked, they are skewed. But they are at least notable, given the demographics of the state.

Here's the thing: Whatever anybody's poll says, whatever the real numbers are, if BYU's circumstances don't improve, or if it doesn't go undefeated — and at this point there's no authentic expectation or indication they or it will — interest in Utah will grow, at the expense of BYU. At a minimum, there are solid reasons to see that happening in Utah. As a cultural anthropologist who studies such things once said, "Fans want to identify with a winner. Not just a winner, a winner that matters. It makes them feel better about themselves."

Turns out, love — and loyalty — is explainable, and, at the moment, that's not happy news for the Cougars.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.