SALT LAKE CITY -- It's one thing for three young dudes in visiting blue to walk a sidewalk past a backyard full of amped-up bloodstreams and take on a brief barrage of invective. It's another thing for three young dudes in visiting blue to walk a sidewalk past a backyard full of amped-up bloodstreams and take on a brief barrage of invective at 7:58 a.m.
Were you the kind of person who prefers your invective to arrive after 8 a.m., the 98th Holy War between BYU and Utah on Saturday might have come as jarring or amusing. A rivalry nationally underrated -- as are many sporting things in the American West -- had found its loftiest chapter with two top-10 teams and BYU winning the past three editions as spice. It had found also a 10 a.m. local kickoff time courtesy of television scheduling, and that provided for intense groggy-hour sights and sounds, plus the realization that while BYU still forbids profanity around campus, Utah opts for a freer linguistic approach.
One young woman even shouted barbed language about BYU down to the sidewalks from a window on a seventh floor or so, hoping her message would cascade down to visiting recipients. One young man came out to his porch to yell swear words at BYU passersby all while appearing to have no other purpose for coming out to his porch. When four BYU buses pulled up at the beautiful front of the University of Utah around 7:40, and people in marching-band T-shirts got out, people on the sidewalk made vomiting sounds without actually vomiting, and a car went by and a window went down and a voice rang out with a spate of unkindnesses. Full yards of students booed blue clothing spotted across streets.
It's rare to take in so much so soon on any clock.
If descending toward the game from a curl through the Wasatch at 7 a.m., you might have spotted the stadium way over on the horizon all lit up, which just felt strange, as if a cleanup persisted from some late-night concert. (It did not.) Snow capped some mountains, 31 degrees appeared on the phone, and a car wash along the way already had opened, with a guy out there scrubbing in shorts and a T, another case of Utahns requiring fewer layers than visitors.
Closer to the stadium, tailgate fires abounded and looked like little campfires. Droves of red clothing moved down the sidewalks already. It felt like the cemetery across the street from the stadium might just wake up. It felt like the bottle of Jameson on a table already halfway gone on a tailgate table at 7:15 might hasten a trip to the cemetery.
Music boomed. Fraternity brothers made primal screams across roads toward other, similar creatures. Any sign containing a "Y," such as "University Circle" and "University Street," ran the risk of having the "Y" crossed out with red tape in an "X" shape. In the roads near both the campus and the stadium, banners draped from houses, fraternity and otherwise. At least one had a predictable play on the noun "cougar." At least five can't really appear in print. Many went with the "Y" in BYU upside-down. At least two referred to BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier. Some made reference to BYU's prohibition of sex. One read: HELL IS REAL. IT'S IN PROVO. One went with a summary of BYU expenditures, claiming that 10% of its money goes toward its church and 90% toward football officials.
At just after 9, fans in Utah red already had filled the top rung of the stadium, visible way up there from outside down below. In a sidewalk throng inching toward the stadium, a man spoke of the possibility of Utah ascending to No. 1 if it won against BYU, a signal of how urgent things had become in this era. In the thick lines toward customer-service windows handling ticket questions, one guy had a costume worthy of a prize: a red bathrobe.
Three helicopters rattled above the stadium, and kickoff came. The public address played Journey's "Separate Ways."
There's actually a good bit of good will tucked into the Holy War, and Utah coach Morgan Scalley said he and BYU coach Kalani Sitake aimed to emphasize that above the "toxic." They man a rivalry that former Utah coach Kyle Whittingham used to call the equal of the more ballyhooed ones more eastward (such as the one Whittingham inhabits now as head coach at Michigan). It's one school with a cherished "U" on a hillside forged in 1905 and one school with a cherished "Y" on a hillside forged in 1906, the second- and third-oldest hillside letters in the land (behind Berkeley, apparently). It's a different kind of rivalry as it lacks the sneering and resentment found in many states with their age-old "culture versus agriculture" themes among two schools. It's a case of the urban versus the pretty much urban, of Provo with its remarkable array of foods from all nations owing largely to the connections formed in missions, of Salt Lake City as it has grown and diversified and reached the heady verge of becoming a two-time Olympic city. It's one school about 98% Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (BYU), and another at about 36% (Utah). The rivalry doesn't really dwell in economic snobbery even if there was that time in 1993 when a BYU defensive lineman did indicate he expected to see Utes pumping his gas someday.
Where, then, lies the Holy War tension? A 2000 BYU graduate, standing amid the Utah tailgate bedlam with a BYU Cougar emblem dangling on a hefty chain from his neck, pinpointed the roles.
"Oh, it's for sure, self-righteous versus Babylon," Kris Eschmeyer said. "Right? The world versus the church, in a way. They view us as self-righteous, we view them as not caring about morals, perhaps." He said, "It's an odd hatred. A lot of us are very religious and so it's almost like this opportunity, for one day of the year, to not be so Christlike (and he laughed a big laugh right there). I hope it stays in good fun, and it should, but perhaps at times it goes too far. I don't want to take it too far, but I enjoy the banter for sure."
In anticipation of said banter, he stood in blue amid the red, mildly disappointed in the level of razzing as of 8:45 a.m. "I've only gotten like seven 'F-yous' so far," he said. He said that while the infrequent BYU defeats tend to cause him grumpiness, his wife encouraged him to cope by finding his "inner Sitake," an homage to college football's utmost gentleman. Eschmeyer spoke at a moment in time when BYU fans could boast of three straight wins, just after Utah fans had boasted of nine straight wins in their typically close football games that often tilt toward the haywire. "I try to keep it fun," he said. "I want to get razzed a little bit. Like, I'm walking through here hoping it happens a little bit. I mean, I don't want to get beer thrown on me, like Max Hall's family..."
That referred to the former BYU quarterback (2006-09), whose famous rant -- "I hate their program; I hate their fans" -- remains revered in lore.
Most everyone fielding a question about the origin of the intensity of the rivalry goes right to the idea of the proximity: 45 miles apart, puny compared with Michigan and Ohio State (164) or Auburn and Alabama (127) or Austin and College Station (88).
"The biggest thing here is the proximity, and then you have houses divided," said devout Ute Greg Nicholes, who awakened at 3 a.m. Saturday to co-produce a bonanza of a tailgate called "Utah by 5" (an old saying of a late radio figure, Tom Barberi).
He took a break from cooking chile verde breakfast burritos on his Blackstone and his Camp Chef to tour-guide a visitor and to say, "You have people, they grow up and Mom and Dad, Mom was a Ute fan, Dad was a Cougar fan. The kids have got to choose. It's just that they're so close, and then it's just, Kalani Sitake used to coach at the U [as defensive coordinator]. [Former Utah head coach] Kyle Whittingham was a Cougar [as a student and player]. I mean, it's just one of those things that they're so intermixed and me, when I was getting recruited out of high school for basketball, my Dad, one of my parents' friends, they're like, 'What if he gets recruited by BYU?' 'Well, if he's that good, he'll get recruited by other people so we don't have to worry about that stuff.' I grew up in a house, like, you wore blue, you're out. It's just, 'No.' And I'm trying to raise my kids now, we do not like BYU. But hate, all that other hate right now in the world? No. No. We want to have some fun. We bring Cougar fans with us."
He concluded, "I don't like using the word 'hate.' I like 'dislike, dislike.'"
Many agree that although maybe the old days featured distinctly separate camps, they've bled together more in this era, and just as 17 of the 22 meetings this woolly century have landed at one-score final scores. It's very possible to meet people who have switched allegiances during life, or people who would never yell Scorsese-movie language at others. "I love Sitake," said Ron Johnson, an 86-year-old Ute fan standing over a tailgate and still working happily at his job selling quilting fabrics. "He's the greatest. A super nice guy."
Still, the fans filling Rice-Eccles with a massive ocean of red (surrounding a wee river of blue) sounded as if carrying a deep want, even before noon, as if the three losses had carved the depth of that want. The noise contained some sort of celestial pitch of frenzy. The press box had a seating overflow. The stadium literally shuddered sometimes. "They were a huge factor in the game," Scalley would say of the fans, soon adding, "They love their football. They love their community."
When Utah linebacker Trey Reynolds intercepted Bachmeier's pass midflight squarely atop the goal line with 4:46 left and Utah's lead at 28-20, Reynolds looked about 10 feet tall even while technically 6-foot-1. And the sounds soon thereafter: "Mr. Brightside" might have become a fixture in college football stadiums, but it's highly recommended just after a senior linebacker has turned into a giant after some might have started a here-we-go-again train of thought.
What followed encapsulated just about everything that's embedded in the Holy War, from the good to the bitter to the good-bitter. The win ended. Red bled across the field. Ute fans waved mockingly toward BYU fans, shouted mean things. Flags on tall posts swayed on the field in the mass. The stadium played the immortal Etta James: "At Last." As Sitake left the field, Utah fans leaned down from above and applauded him, and he applauded them back. Utah quarterback Devon Dampier appeared amid the kind of feting swarm that can sprinkle goosebumps across the remainder of a lifetime.
Forty-five minutes after all of that, one longtime Ute fan stood alone on a quiet part of the sidewalk, waiting for a ride, with her phone to her ear as a postgame show replayed the call of Reynolds' interception. "We're really close to each other -- 45 minutes, it's really close," Judy Bishop said. So when defeat comes, the razzing visits most every day all year -- in workplaces, in neighborhoods. "Everybody's got an opinion on it," she said. "Everybody talks about it all the time. At work, you know, there's people that are from Utah, and BYU, and they go at it all the time."
Therefore, when victory comes, there's this other little element that elbows into the mix: relief. "Yes!" she said. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."
What a lot to feel, and hear, and see, and by barely 2 o'clock.