This seems like it would, should be an easy issue to resolve, just by way of leaning on the general decency of humankind. But for some strange reason, it lives on.
Should we blame a hateful country, the hateful leadership of a hateful country, hateful social media, or just dumb college kids who don’t know what they’re doing, what they’re saying?
The chant is familiar now. The one heard among some at football and basketball road games involving BYU, the three-word chant that starts with a word beginning with an “F” and ending with a “K,” then a “the” in the middle, then “Mormons” at the end. The expression, too often yelled out in unison inside of student sections and maybe from others in the crowd, too, is aimed not just at the Cougars on the field, not just the Cougars on the court, but at an entire religion.
It’s happened at Arizona and Oregon and Providence and Colorado and other school venues and, most recently, at Cincinnati on Saturday night at Nippert Stadium, where BYU beat the Bearcats in a Big 12 football game.
Apologies in the aftermath aren’t enough, neither is a token fine. Nor the sting of institutional embarrassment. Something more effective, whatever it might be, is called for. That’s up to school and conference officials to conjure and implement. But they better hurry because this happening has blown past stupid, straight to malicious.
On the whole, BYU as a university has felt at home since landing in the Big 12. And while the school, its teams and its fans mostly have tried to fit in, have tried to extend a warm welcome to their still new league-mates off the field, off the court, while trying, often successfully, to kick their trash around on those playing surfaces, the chant has been hurled at them, nonetheless.
Ironic it was that food donations were sent along to Cincinnati by BYU and its sponsoring church prior to the game at which the chant was heard again. Fans of BYU have participated in charitable causes on occasions when they could, such as the recent one at Texas Tech, where a team barber’s wife was struck and injured by a drunk driver. Cougar fans heard about the incident and gave what they could to that more-than-worthy endeavor.
But the chant continues to crop up.
Some BYU fans fall short of celestial. Some can be obnoxious. Most are not. Some opposing fans might not believe in or agree with particular tenets of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church that owns and operates BYU, and that’s OK. Firing this specific obscene directive at them is not.
I’ve written about this strangeness on multiple occasions, coming at it from varying angles, citing its inappropriateness, making fun of it, condemning it. The last time, I wrote that since those approaches hadn’t seemed to have had much of an effect, I suggested that BYU and church members, in the spirit of good-neighborly Christianity, if not embrace the chant, at a minimum ignore it. Kind of turn the other cheek and take it. Use it as a means of spreading awareness about the religion, underscoring that no other church — at least that I know of — elicits that kind of notice from opposing fans around the country. The chant typically gains notoriety and more than a few times has been reported by numerous news outlets.
BYU officials have made no secret of the fact that they like to use BYU sports as a means of raising the profile of their religion, even utilizing it as a missionary tool to share their beliefs with others. Was it P.T. Barnum that said no publicity is bad publicity? “F--- the Mormons” may not be a preferred means for grabbing attention, but, as mentioned, most folks know of no other religion that gets that special kind of … um, what’s the word, focus?
I’m not a spokesperson for said church, but I’ve talked to some ecclesiastical leaders on the inside who, understandably, do not like the chant and would love to see it go away. Even more, they don’t like the ignorance and belligerence it displays and, in some cases, perpetuates.
Maybe some Notre Dame fans have noticed disrespectful comments made by opposing fans, inebriated or otherwise, at sporting events not just about the Irish, but rather about Catholics. Maybe other religious institutions of higher learning that field teams have heard mean-spirited things said. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard “F--- the Catholics,” or “F--- the Methodist”s or “F--- the Jews” at a football game.
If it happens, it shouldn’t. There’s nothing high-minded or highfalutin or holier-than-thou about such a statement. It’s simply a call for human decency, decency that even 18-to-23-year-olds rooting for their school’s teams, rooting for the competitive demise of an opposing school’s teams can grasp and process.
It’s one thing, in the off-the-deep-end spirit of competition, to “sports-hate” another group of people because they cheer for another team. It’s a whole different matter to hate-hate a group of people for the way they worship.
Even those college-age kids, sober or a six-pack deep into their preferred liquid refreshment, or somewhere in between, should be able to get that much, and remember it at a game so as not to participate in a bigoted chant that proves that they don’t.