It’s a question that hangs like a low-dangling light in the middle of a room for college fans, including those at BYU, Utah and Utah State, to bang your heads on in these days of so many player transfers:

How do you view and treat and think about athletes you previously cheered for who now are moving elsewhere to compete for somebody else?

Hate ‘em? Love ‘em? Forgive ‘em? Forget about ‘em?

Guys like Rob Wright III and Smith Snowden and John Henry Daley and plenty of others.

A second question: Does it make you distrustful of players who, for the time being, are either staying or coming in, wearing your colors … as long as it suits them?

Until something better comes along.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

No matter how you answer those questions, there’s not much you can do to change it. But you can do what a living Beatle suggested a long time ago. I’ll get to that.

First, this truth: It certainly seems as though a whole lot of fans care more about the school for which they root than some of the athletes who are on the court or the field, the players who are supposedly spilling their blood, sweat and tears for the school and the program the people in the seats not only adore and identify with, but also are asked by school officials to pay thousands of dollars every season for those seats.

When the fans feel as though they are sacrificing more in offered emotional support, let alone financial investment, than parts of “their” team who might be embraced now, but that future embrace is iffy, at best, how do they — you — handle that? How are they — you — supposed to handle that?

Is it proper to show disappointment and anger toward the ball-playing Benedict Arnolds who have jumped ship? Or is that bad form? Are you supposed to show kindness and gratitude to the mercenaries who blessed you with their talents even temporarily, the players who played you, who took in your cheers, who so easily came and went? Are fans allowed to take your allegiances and bail on your schools, looking for a better deal elsewhere, as quickly as a growing number of collegiate athletes do?

That last one — all of them, really — is a sneaky question that sits and has always sat at the center of the relationship between sports and fans.

It’s easy for outsiders, those who have somehow escaped the clutches and rewards of emotional attachment in the form of fandom, to declare: “Hey, if you don’t like what’s happening in college sports, if you don’t like athletes chasing dollars and getting them, if you don’t like the way the pendulum has swung from schools and coaches having all the power to now players having so much of it, then stop caring, stop buying overpriced tickets, stop paying for $20 burgers and $20 beverages at crowded concession stands, stop donating large sums of money, stop contributing to NIL funds, stop cheering your guts out for young people who don’t care about you the way you care about them, or at least the way you care when they hit jumpers or throw touchdown passes. Just … stop.”

The problem with that declaration is that buying sports, in this case college sports, isn’t like buying a television or a refrigerator or a chainsaw or a lawnmower. You don’t simply switch brands when the product doesn’t satisfy. And even if you did, you’d likely face some of the same difficulties with the change.

It runs deeper than just that.

A lot of you fans of certain teams are fans not just because you attended that particular school — which, indeed, stirs strong passion and devotion, when your human experience is tied in like that — but sometimes it’s an intergenerational type of transmission. Grandpa and Grandma rooted for that team, Uncle Bill and Aunt Betty rooted for that team, Mom and Dad rooted for that team, therefore, I root for that team. Or maybe it’s a regional connection. It’s a tradition. It’s an identity.

Not like buying a washer and dryer every five or 10 years.

It draws you and yours in, and then you’re either blessed or cursed or something in between. There’s a permanence to it.

Permanence is hardly the word among college athletes now, not all of them, but an ever-increasing number. For them, it’s now about cash, opportunity, cash, pro preparation, cash, relationship with coaches, cash, advantageous exposure, and cash.

Fans shell out the cash, more and more of it. Athletes take it in, more and more of it.

When athletes up and leave, some fans take it personally. You hate the deserters, especially if transfers head to a rival school. You feel betrayed. Other fans just accept it as a modern reality.

Interesting it is, though, when the haters are on the receiving end, when a great athlete transfers to your team, those athletes are immediately welcomed. Nobody wastes a bit of time or energy on compassion for the poor school that just got left behind. No, those saps just couldn’t keep up, couldn’t keep their prize. That’s their problem.

When a point guard like Rob Wright III bolts from Baylor, after a single season, to BYU, but then, after a single season, bolts from BYU to wherever he winds up, some Cougar fans — you? — get upset — don’t know how many — but, really, they — you — might have seen it coming. When defensive lineman John Henry Daley and defensive back Smith Snowden leave Utah for Michigan, after half the Utes’ coaching staff hops to Ann Arbor, some Utah fans — you? — are … um, royally blue. (Apologies.) And don’t even ask how some Utes felt when defensive lineman Keanu Tanuvasa transferred from Utah to BYU.

Every transfer has a reason. Fans, most of them — you, are stuck.

Here’s the healthy answer: I’m no Sigmund Freud, but in this day and age of player mobility, I’d recommend focusing on the brand, not on the branded. I get it, hate has an unfortunate place in sports — sports hate or s’pate, as some call it — but it’s just not worth letting what 19- or 20-year-old kids decide is best for them cause emotional rupture.

Yeah, it gets old, the social media posts of players saying how much they’ve loved being a part of a program, your program, having such a fantastic time at your school, appreciating your support, and then comes the dreaded … “That being said, I’m leaving for Timbuktu U. or other parts unknown. Do not contact.”

Listen to what Paul McCartney’s mother, Mary, once so famously told him and he even more famously remembered: Let it be.

Soon enough, you and your school, your team, will be on the positive receiving end of someone else’s pain, if your school’s NIL pockets are deep enough, if your pockets are deep enough. And if you donate here, you can help make all that a reality. Send in your cash, buy your tickets, purchase your $20 burgers and $20 beverages, and celebrate that, along with the jumpers and touchdowns.

Why?

Because you’re stuck. Your school knows it and you know it. A few might trickle off, but only a few. That’s just the way it is. And the way it always will be. Let it be.