When I was first made a full-time columnist about a thousand years ago, and in the decades since, I strapped on the scuba tanks, the mask, the fins and took various dives with other columnists into deepwater discussions about the differences between writing in that role versus that of being a beat reporter or feature writer.

The No. 1 difference according to legendary guys like William Rhoden, Mike Downey, Jim Murray and Bill Plaschke, as I remember it, was and is this: If you’re going to write columns, on most occasions, anyway, have a point of view.

I agreed, so that’s what I’ve typically done. And I’ve got the scars to prove it. Maybe you can relate. What happens when you gather around the Thanksgiving dinner table with family and friends and start in on expressing your opinion? Yeah, you divide the room. Uncle Billy thinks you’re #$@&% brilliant, Aunt Trudy thinks you’ve got %$&#$@ dirt for brains. These days, those divisions, especially on certain topics, are even more severe than they once were, sometimes a bit less fun. Pity.

Today, I’m going to break from that tradition. Instead, I’m going to ask for your opinion, not as some literary device, rather because I’m genuinely curious as to what all y’all — the plural form, I’m told, of y’all — think on an important sports topic.

Rivalry.

Recently, I wrote a column about the possibly changing dynamic in the BYU-Utah football rivalry, what with new Ute head coach Morgan Scalley entering the fray alongside veteran BYU coach Kalani Sitake, about how it might be a disappointing and difficult deal for a number of fans on both sides of that rivalry to handle the fact that each of those guys is a good dude. Not just good in the sense that both are decent human beings, but also each is downright affable, likable, easy to be around. Fun, even.

You got to admit when the head coach of your rival team, the team you’re supposed to hate and you pretty much always have hated, is a man you’d actually enjoy playing 18 holes with, not to jingle your keys in the middle of his backswing or hit his heal with your club head while yelling “rattlesnake,” not to separate him from the ample cash in his wallet, not to take pleasure in his demise, rather to take pleasure in his company, it removes at least some of the loathing a bitter rivalry is often meant to create. Agree or disagree with that as you will.

Here’s the question then, the one that, in this case, replaces my declarative statement, my POV, with yours: What are fans on the opposite side of the rivalry — some of them friends, some of them family, some of them co-workers, some of them neighbors, some of them fellow believers — supposed to do with that?

If Sitake is amiable and Scalley is amiable, more so than rival coaches of the past — with the lone exception of LaVell Edwards and Ron McBride, neither of whom was easy to dislike — should that affect the way you feel about the big game?

Not saying Kyle Whittingham or Bronco Mendenhall or Urban Meyer or Gary Crowton or coaches of the past were definitively one thing or the other, but some coaches do — and did — throw hand grenades into the mix to please their own or tick off their opponent.

Another disclaimer: Maybe Scalley will yet say or do something that will chap the hides of Sitake and Cougar fans after he as a head coach and Sitake face each other in the throes of heated competition. Maybe Sitake will say or do something incendiary.

If they don’t, what do you do?

I’ve already gotten feedback on that previous column from folks claiming a football rivalry is a football rivalry, end of story. There’s a time under the heavens to love and a time to hate. Utah-BYU football invokes the latter no matter who’s doing the coaching. That’s the beauty in it — the irrationality, the ridiculousness of it, come what may. The measure of a man has and should have no bearing on stirring any kind of friendly feelings. Not now, not ever out on the turf or in the stands. Save all that, if you absolutely must, for Sunday school or weddings or graduations or baptisms or family reunions or funerals. Or don’t feel or save it at all.

What say y’all? What say all y’all? I really want to get a fuller picture here. How deep does the vitriol run? I’ll post your responses in the days ahead, at least the ones that contain fewer swear words than Uncle Billy and Aunt Trudy would spew.