COLUMN: Get on board, or just get out
Don’t try and tell me that you didn’t pay attention or think twice about what shirt you put on before leaving your house for the day. Don’t try and justify to me that because you came from a household of fans and alumni of another school you have valid reason to wear another school’s apparel on USU’s campus. Don’t try to argue a comparison of wins and losses to validate your support of one school’s football team, while claiming to be a rabid fan of another school’s basketball program. I’ve heard it all before.
Rivalries in college sports are about so much more than just wins and losses once you look just below the surface of the games themselves. College rivalries dive into a deeper realm where students and fans of different universities seem to develop a collective attitude, personality or mindset about who they are and what they stand for.
The games themselves add plenty of fire to college rivalries, but it’s those personal differences that inject the true passion into it all. That passion is what makes every die-hard fan hang on the edge of their seat on every play of a rivalry game, because the idea of losing a game at the hand of a team you hate, and having to deal with fans of that institution, is essentially unbearable.
Of course the team and school inspiring all of this is none-other than Brigham Young University. The school where every student stands on a pedestal in which nobody has placed them because they have this idea that their academic prowess is second-to-none. Little do they know that nobody in the real world is the slightest bit envious of them. The high-and-mighty persona carried by everybody and everything associated with BYU is what makes them unbearable, and it is what makes it so illogical for anybody at Utah State to support such a program.
At Utah State, we know we’re the perennial underdogs over most of the landscape of college athletics. It’s a role we all seem to know, understand and embrace. We don’t act like we’re entitled to any kind of undue accolades or national respect. We just shut up and earn it, and if we come up short on earning anything, we just shut up.
BYU on the other hand, sticks to their high-and-mighty persona with relentless persistence, so much so that when other non-BCS programs such as Boise State, TCU and their hated rival Utah have all made a BCS run or two in the past six years, BYU decided that they were the ones who would be above the level of conference affiliation and seek independence.
Sure, their program has had a little success, but not nearly as much as you’d think from talking to their fans. All the while, at Utah State, there has been a recent surge in the effort to resurrect the football program from school administrators, coaches and fans alike. Nobody is demanding anything we don’t deserve. All we’ve done is put our trust in head coach Gary Andersen and shown up in large numbers to try and bring some of that Spectrum mojo to Romney Stadium.
Not to mention there’s always a certain charm to being the underdog like Utah State has been for as long as we’ve all been around. How many times have you seen a movie about a team who was ranked No. 1 in the preseason overcoming all sorts of adversity to reach, or stay on the top?
When the odds-on favorite pulls off a big win, it’s just what everybody expects. When the underdog pulls off a shocker of epic magnitude, that’s what turns the heads of the college sports world, and that is an opportunity and position that Utah State has, and it’s a spot that has a constant thrill to it.
If you are still not convinced that the grass is greener here in Logan, then take a visit to BYU’s campus. Maybe even soak in a game down there and just take a look around. It’s like a massive gathering of all the annoying kids who made everybody around them dislike them while growing up, but have banded together at the same university to develop an over-estimated sense of power and entitlement due simply to their strength in numbers. Sure, they’ve won a few more football games in the past than USU, but that’s where the rivalries run deeper than just the records of the teams.
Would you really want to associate yourself with them, especially since their record is also only 1-3, even though their team has been relatively healthy all year? BYU may win some football games, but Aggie fans will forever be crushing Cougar fans in the game of life.
Come Friday night, the Aggies just might be crushing the Cougars on the field as well.
Matt Sonnenberg is a senior majoring in print journalism. Matt is an avid fan of Aggie athletics and can be found on the front row of every home football and basketball game. He can also be reached at matt.sonn@aggiemail.usu.edu.