Gordon Monson: Does the BYU-Utah fan vitriol go too far?

Is the BYU-Utah rivalry a healthy thing or a detrimental one for college sports and those who find themselves awash in them?

Hold that thought for a minute.

My phone rang recently and when answered, the voice on the other end expressed real concern about what the caller had experienced at a recent rivalry-fueled basketball game. A high school basketball game. Chants and behaviors of fans in the stands, including adults, had blown past typical evidences of fandom, landing about a driver, a fairway wood and a stiff iron beyond traditional immaturity and vulgarity. Beyond, you know, the run-of-the-mill profanely fun stuff. Emotion led straight through swearing to denigration to over-the-top rage, people yelling things at the opposing team and the opposing team’s fans that normally, in most other circumstances, would never have been uttered or demonstrated.

Sports does that to people sometimes, transforming a guy who you would trust to do your taxes or to teach your kid’s Sunday school class into a maniac, into an out-of-control fool, and sometimes into a dark, dark soul. You’ve seen it. I know I have.

I once sat at a girls’ softball game in which the parents of one squad got increasingly mad at the umpire calling balls and strikes, straight to the point where certain parents were screaming words at the poor blue behind the plate that rhymed with “mock-plucker” and “brother-trucker.” And that was in just the third inning. Fans of the one team insulted fans of the other. Near game’s end, some of those people decided it would be a proper idea to climb the backstop, shaking it as they ascended, and start spitting at the umpire. Guy was probably making 50 bucks for his effort.

The whole scene seemed — and, indeed, was — insane.

Other competitive moments — at levels from junior sports to professional sports — have led to similar examples of boorish behavior. I saw a fight break out in the stands at an MLB game once that ended with one fan having his nose grotesquely shifted from the middle of his face to the side, the altercation stemming, at least at the onset, from the fact that the punchee wore a different jersey than the puncher.

That reminded me in a so-sad-and-sorry sort of way of a long-ago story I read in the news about a dad of a young hockey player, I think it was, who had been attacked by a dad of a young hockey player on an opposing team, and the first father had died from the assault. At the funeral, the grieving son was so distraught he actually crawled into the casket with the body of his father. So much suffering caused by emotion and competition taken to the extreme.

And while those are extreme examples, they are rooted in the same vehemence that stirs in fans who insult and offend one another in the stands or on social media. Sometimes, it’s all in good-spirited goofing around. Sometimes, it’s just stupid. Sometimes, it nears and reaches a point of ugliness that betrays one of the very things sports is good for — replacing passions for trying to win and attempting to conquer others without the violence that can accompany such fervor.

A cultural anthropologist once told me that modern-day sports teams — be they prep, college or pro — are more civilized representations of ancient armies of city-states doing battle with armies of neighboring city-states. For instance, the Jazz beating the Thunder — OK, so we could probably come up with a better, more balanced example — represents Utah defeating Oklahoma.

One of the most heated rivalries significant to people around here is, of course, the Utah-BYU feud. Schools are 50 miles apart, founded by the same historic leader, teams competing against one another, in some cases, for more than a century now, some fans — not all, but some — assigning and aligning their fandom to and with individual lifestyles, ranging from politics to religion.

The passion that comes with said fandom, once demonstrated face-to-face at the office, around the water cooler, in the neighborhood or at church, is now reflected in a major way on social media. And the keyboard warriors, made so brave by their anonymity, raging against one another have reached now-customary levels of nasty.

Such has been the case during recent weeks when coaches and players have bounced around and through transfer portal openings and opportunities, revealing that many of those coaches and players are not nearly as attached to their schools as the fans who, as it turns out, far exceed them in not just passion, but permanence.

What follows, then, are taunts from the red to the blue, and barbs from the blue to the red, proclaimed superiority fired off in both directions.

I know, I know this is nothing new. But the established identities so strongly tied to one side or the other have been fascinating to see and study through the years. I’ve asked psychologists and sociologists about the phenomenon, and they’ve often hit the identity thing hard. I guess that applies to a lot of aspects in life, from the kind of phones people buy to the kind of cars they drive to the kind of beverages they drink.

But for folks not just to invest the amount of money they do for tickets to games, for gear to wear, for NIL funds to pay out to athletes in order to achieve more winning, but to also take the time to harangue the other guys online often in completely irrational and idiotic ways is a deep dive for followers of Freud to figure out.

There are differences among various devoted individuals on both sides of the equation, but the funny thing is, many of them are pretty much the same, the only distinction being the color they wear. Maybe that intensifies the rivalry even more.

Is it healthy? One thing is certain: It sells tickets, as was demonstrated at the recent Utah-BYU basketball game at the Huntsman Center. Usually you could fly a Goodyear blimp through that building during games without blocking anyone’s view, but for that particular game, the red seats were filled — with fans wearing crimson and blue.

Former Jazz great Deron Williams once told me when he was playing in Utah how much he “hated” the rival Lakers.

A former BYU quarterback once said how much he “hates” Utah, “hates everything about ‘em.”

A current Utah football coach said he “hates” BYU.

Hate, apparently, is the child of a rivalry. Is that a good thing?

Peter Jackson is said to have said: “Rivalry doesn’t help anybody.”

Archie Manning is said to have said: “People are just so passionate about football … great rivalries through the years, unbelievable rivalries. It’s healthy.”

If you are awash in college sports, I figure it’s a little like water. It’s a useful thing, a beneficial thing, a helpful thing … unless it crashes on your head, tires you out, and drowns you.