COLUMN: An ode to a rivalry
Thousands of eager fans sat roasting in the unusually warm October sun. The most dedicated fans painted themselves blue, only worsening the hot conditions for themselves. That, however, is the kind of sacrifice that makes college football great.
The opportunity to play our most bitter foe at home made for a fantastic Friday evening. If you haven’t heard who won yet, your only excuse is a coma. I do not mean to make light of a tragic human condition, but simply accentuate how important the Friday win over BYU was for the Aggie faithful. At the risk of vilifying myself, I must confess that I grew up a fan of BYU. This only changed when I came to Utah State and fell in love with Aggie athletics. I am a life-long fan of college football, so even though some deemed being a fan of Aggie football as something difficult, I had no problem re-aligning my loyalties … even though some may claim I hold Cougar sentiments to this day.
The exhilarating experience that was the BYU-USU basketball game last year was enough to turn the tables. Fanaticism is fiercely contagious, and in the Spectrum or Romney Stadium, nearly impossible to avoid. But who would want to?
This Friday’s smack-down, for the lack of a more satisfying term, only added flame to the fire of my favorite Utah State rivalry. We have beaten them now. Not just in hockey, or basketball, but their pride and joy – football. Sure, our last share of football greatness came from the new namesake of the field, Merlin Olsen, and yes, BYU has their all-American quarterbacks. But we have the win, this time around. The future is bright for our program, as is the future of the rivalry. We may very well see the changing of the tides in the annual battle of the resident church school and their state university rival. The University of Utah will graduate to a BCS automatic qualifying conference next year, and from the looks of it, BYU is likely to remain a second-tier program for the foreseeable future. Perhaps we can follow Utah’s trajectory and leapfrog BYU on our way to football supremacy. As the famous Bull Sheet hopefully declared a few weeks ago, a BCS bowl may be in our future. But, let us not hold our breath.
We are not there yet. A winning season will be a good start, and this victory over a team likely to end the season under .500 is best viewed as a moral victory. That said, I have had a smile on my face since the middle of the second quarter on Friday. I loved being in the midst of fans who loved being there. The crowd went wild with every well-executed play, and cheered the many mishaps of a clearly distraught BYU team. The passion of college football is something only found in America. We can set aside our petty differences, and in my case, an important homework assignment, and create petty differences between us and the players and fans of the opposite team. Sure we may have to deal with cumbersome politics and an unfortunate economy, but we still have our football! We can live and die each week in four hours. We can praise and scorn players we don’t know as we would close friends or enemies.
So there it is. We’ve arrived. We are undefeated against BYU this decade. Here’s to hoping it continues. One thing is for sure, the true rivalry is back on until they can beat us regularly once more. If I had my wish, it won’t be like that ever again. An era of winning has returned to Utah State and we are all lucky to be a part of it. The next time we battle BYU football, they will be a football independent with a rocky future. Hopefully by then, our conference future will be assured and we can WAC them once more, but this time in Provo.
Tyler Barlow is a sophomore majoring in computer engineering. He can be reached at tyler.barlow@aggiemail.usu.edu