There’s a way for college leaders to handle the “F-the-Mormons” chants that have arisen far too often at BYU football and basketball games over the past few years.

After-the-fact apologies by school administrators are not effective, not enough. Neither are fines doled out that exact a bit of cash from institutions. These (mostly small) amounts haven’t amounted to any real change. What effect the Big 12’s recently announced “Respect the Game” campaign, a more comprehensive effort to encourage sportsmanship, will have at schools across the league is yet to be seen.

Good sportsmanship, to me, has meant that players, coaches and partisans in general at games don’t allow their emotions, their fandom, to spill over in the heat of competition into acting like dopes, hollering nastiness, cheating, playing dirty and, on the opposite side of the equation, simply being semi-kind humans.

Insulting an entire religion with the “FU” chant hadn’t really entered the equation, not at games where Jimmy and Johnny were out there trying to pick up a first down or hit a free throw.

As everyone with ears to hear now knows, it has, in fact, barged and barreled its way into all the regular competitive fun, despite those calls from some officials for more civil behavior. Whether a sportsmanship campaign, playing pregame videos up on the board and using other methods can remind or educate, in some cases, inebriated college students to lay off the aggressive verbal assaults on an entire faith is a dubious question.

Maybe something with a little more teeth might be more effective.

An idea comes from someone who might surprise people. It’s not his alone — others have suggested it, too — but it’s a good one that would make a difference for a couple of reasons.

Chris Hill, the former longtime athletic director at Utah, suggested that nailing offending fans and their teams with an automatic penalty would throw a bucket of water on the chants and likely put a proper end to them.

“Assess a 15-yard penalty or maybe a 30-yard penalty against whatever team’s fans do the chant,” he said. “Coaches would join in on discouraging them, for sure.”

For basketball games, which not infrequently come down to a margin of victory or defeat of just a point or two, assess technical fouls.

Hill and others bring up a strong point, one that would carry more weight than reminding people to hold hands and sing Kumbaya together. Remember officials, coaches, players of the past informing fans that the other team on the field or on the court is, as they said it, opponents, not enemies? F— that, right?

I’m not exactly sure how our sporting society crossed the threshold from yelling goofy stuff at the other guys because they wear a different color uniform or ripping the refs or engaging in a little trash talk to hurling F-bombs in group fashion at people for the way they worship God, but here we are.

It’s likely just periodic, small segments of fans who do this, but if they do this, and the home team’s coach knows his team will be put at a disadvantage on account of it, he’ll do what some coaches have previously done when people have chucked coins or water bottles on the court or field: He’ll get on the microphone and scream at his own fans. More sane fans will join in reprimanding the offenders, too.

Yeah, penalties, more than programs to deter a lack of sportsmanship, will put an end to the chants. Unfortunate though it is that they are needed.