Bronco Mendenhall Does Not Deserve Blame for Rivalry Toxicity

-- Post 301 in this blog's history is a rant about misunderstood rivalry history

Kalani’s arrival as BYU’s head coach has coincided with what many have described as a “de-escalation” of the BYU-Utah rivalry. Lots of fans from both sides in recent years have enjoyed waxing righteous about how the rivalry had grown too toxic, as if the sport of football, one in which kids are maimed and concussed and handicapped deserves the reverence of golf.

“Thanks goodness Kalani has come and made the rivalry decent again.”

“Things were getting out of hand in the rivalry until Kalani came in.”

And this is true to a degree – Kalani has shown much respect to the Utes in his words and demeanor during his career, despite losing to them more times than not. This has helped calm the waters. But as a result of Kalani’s efforts toward creating rivalry peacefulness, some people have drawn a line back to Bronco and made the assumption that the rivalry escalated in intensity because of Bronco.

Or in other words, If Kalani fixed the rivalry problem, then Bronco must have started it.

I’ve heard this so much and it absolutely infuriates me to no end. It shows such a remarkable misunderstanding of the history of this rivalry and the nature of rivalries in general that I have no choice but to present a history lesson to the internet.

But first let me start with this: rivalries will always be toxic. They will always be heated. They will always bring out insanity in people. That’s what makes them great. The level of insanity will fluctuate from era to era, depending on a variety of factors, but the tone of a rivalry is not controlled by a coach alone. Coaches and players can influence it, but a game that wraps religion and family around a contest of goliaths crunching each other is its own beast. Do you expect something called the Holy War to be friendly?

And now for the history lesson. Recognize that I’m not going to go over the entire rivalry, with Jim McMahon pointing at the scoreboard or Lenny Gomes talking gas station smack or the 34-31s. I’m just going to address what I believe are the factors that led to the recent escalation of the rivalry, and the factors that have toned it down in the last few years.


BYU enters the era of dramatic victories (Years 1998 through 2005)

1998 – BYU wins the rivalry game on the final play of the game. This is the first of what would prove to be many close-call BYU victories, which Cougar fans revel in, and Ute fans enrage over.

1999 – Utah wins and a BYU fan tries to fight a Ute cheerleader, and to the shame of Cougar nation everywhere, gets annihilated.

2000 –Both teams suck and yet the stakes are seemingly larger than ever because it’s LaVell Edwards last game. BYU wins in dramatic fashion.

2001 – Another high stakes game as BYU is 10-0 and ranked #8 in the country. BYU wins in dramatic fashion.

Summary: Heading into 2002 BYU had won 4 of the last 6 meetings. 3 of the 4 had been dramatic, last-minute, soul-crushing types. These types of wins are re-lived on the playground, in the office, and in the chapel, ratcheting up the rivalry quite nicely. 

 

Urban makes Utah not suck (2002 – 2005)

2002 – This is one of the rare uneventful games, a year in which both teams sucked. Utah wins.

2003 – Urban’s first year. A 3-0 fiesta of punts gives the Utes victory. Utah ends BYU’s streak of games without being shutout.

2004 – Enormous stakes for this game. A win places the cherry on top of Utah’s best season of all-time. And Utah does win in steamroller fashion. BYU is upset that Ute fans are allowed on the field before the game ends, even though it does give us Rod Wilkerson’s best play of his career, when he plows a Ute security guard into the ground. Alex Smith calls BYU arrogant and delivers the tamer version of Max Hall’s speech by saying he “really hates (BYU).”

2005 – The first overtime game of the series sees BYU fall short on the final play of the game.

Summary – Utah takes control of the rivalry with four straight wins. But BYU fans (myself included) are in denial. We believe we were a couple breaks away from winning in ’02, ’03, and ’05. Utah’s trip to the Fiesta Bowl – which is being trumpeted in certain circles as equivalent to BYU’s 1984 title -- coupled with the close loss in ’05 fuel the fires. Alex Smith gets drafted number one and for the first time in the modern era folks are wondering if Utah football has surpassed BYU. This fuels the fire. Urban creates the TDS acronym and allegedly decorates urinal cakes in BYU branding. The fire is officially fueled.


The Era of Extremely High Stakes (2006 to 2009)

2006 – Considering Utah wasn’t very good this year, there sure was a lot riding on the game. Bronco had seemingly brought BYU back from the dead, but to prove it BYU had to take down their rival who had won four straight. In a back-and-forth contest, BYU wins on a dramatic final play.

2007 – The teams meet in late November with both squads in contention for the MWC championship. Both teams have eight wins, which is the highest combined total in years. Plus BYU is trying to win back-to-back league titles and 19 straight MWC games. BYU wins on yet another dramatic, final-moment play. For the 10th time in 11 games, the score is decided by a touchdown or less. In the aftermath my hero Austin Collie credits righteous living as a factor in the “magic” that had fallen on BYU in the last two Ute contests. You can guess Ute fans don't care much for the comment. 

2008 – What was on the line for this game? Let’s see. Utah was ranked 8th in the country and would earn a BCS game with a win. BYU was ranked 16th in the country, and could potentially vault over Utah and earn a BCS game with a win. BYU had won back-to-back MWC championships and Utah would take back the crown with a win. BYU could force a three-way tie if they were to win. Oh yeah and Utah fans had endured two years of reminders about Jonny Harline and 4th and 18. This was the biggest rivalry game of all-time. It still pains me to type the following - Utah wins.

2009 – For the second year in the row – and only the second time in the history of the rivalry – both BYU and Utah are ranked for the game. The stakes are a little lower since TCU has sewed up the MWC title, but BYU is seeking payback after the 2008 humiliation. There's plenty on the line. BYU once again wins in dramatic fashion, this time on the final play. Max Hall delivers the BYU equivalent of the pledge of allegiance, stating he hates everything about the Utes. You and me both brother.

Summary: It’s kind of amazing that for such an intense rivalry the two teams were rarely good at the same time until the late 2000s. This is in my opinion the primary reason the rivalry became so hostile. The stakes for the game in the ’07 to ’09 era had simply never been higher. Combine that with the arrival of social media – Facebook became a battleground, online comment sections ran amok – and it’s no surprise that fan behavior got out of control. During this era you had the incident with Max Hall’s family getting harassed with beer and blow up dolls in ’08, the BYU fan and Whittingham’s wife fighting over a phone in ’09, and of course Max laying down the hammer by saying he hated all Utes.


THE GREAT ESCALATION (2010 to 2013)

2010: In a scene reminiscent of a homeless man winning the lottery, Utah is given a promotion to the Pac-12. BYU, despite having a superior athletic department, is left behind. Do you think either of the fan bases were cool about this? Now add to this recipe that BYU loses the 2010 rivalry game on the final play of the game, due primarily to an egregious video review gone awry. Pure fury is radiating from Provo. Smugness from Salt Lake. Feelings are at an all-time high. Fans have rushed the field in four consecutive contests. In basketball, Utah’s Marshall Henderson hits BYU’s Jackson Emery, which cause many Cougars to rejoice in Max Hall being right about Utah's classlessness. 

2011: In the first edition of the rivalry game where Utah is a member of the Pac-12, all BYU wants to do is prove they deserved the promotion. All Utah wants to do is prove the Pac-12 made the right choice. Oh also, BYU fans are ready for their 21st century version of Ty Detmer, Mr. Jake Heaps, to avenge the injustice of the prior year’s loss. This game had some fight in the early goings. And then things fell apart. Utah crushes BYU and essentially ends Jake Heaps career. On the social media front, even Arby's rubs it in. In basketball, Ute fans are salty that Jimmer earned more media attention than their run to the championship game in 1998.

2012: BYU needs to make up for the turnover debacle in 2011 and the missed call in 2010. They also need to reverse the trend – BYU had won 3 of 4 rivalry games as of 2009, but now were on a two-game losing streak. They also need to show that life as an Indy hasn’t left them as far behind a P5 as everyone thinks. It’s a lot of pressure to put on oneself. Maybe that explains why BYU misses three field goals in this game? Utah fans rush the field multiple times in victory. A boy in suspenders tries to harass Bronco Mendenhall. A devastated JD Falslev becomes the face of a thousand memes sent from overjoyed Utes to downtrodden Cougars.

Summary: Dating back to 2009, three of the last four games haven’t been decided until the final play of the game. Thirteen of the last sixteen have been decided by a touchdown or less. These facts alone would be enough to upgrade a rivalry from intense to psychotic, but add in the fact that Utah got promoted and BYU didn’t; that Jake Heaps turned out to be a dud; that BYU fans felt strongly they should’ve won in ’10 and ’12; that Twitter was rising to prominence and ushering in a new anonymous means of harassing opposing fans; that rumors were flying of Whitt saying he’d never lose to BYU again; that Utah State had beaten Utah more recently than BYU had; that Utah’s recruiting was starting to pull ahead of BYU; that the entire dynamic of BYU being vastly superior to Utah starting from 1980 on had officially flipped … well … add it all together and yeah the rivalry was getting to a level of intensity that hadn’t been seen before.

 

The Climax

2013: All the anger and rejoicing and devastation and celebrations and mockery and superiority and highlight videos and Twitter trash talk and rivalry happenings crescendoed in the year 2013. Leading up to the game you had Ute fans living large letting BYU fans know that Utah State of all teams had beaten them more recently than BYU. You heard talk from Utah fans that if BYU didn’t beat them in 2012 when Utah had various guys out due to injury, then when would BYU ever beat them? And hanging over all of this was the series first two-year break since who knows when. After 2013 the teams wouldn’t meet again until 2016, an element of Utah big-timing BYU that was only possible because Utah kept winning (I mean, they couldn’t lose to BYU and then cancel the series – that’d be pussying out an all-time level). You also had Kyle Van Noy saying the game is “like the super bowl”. You also had BYU trotting out in the royal uniforms for the first time since 2009. You had Utah going for their second four-game winning streak in the last 11 years.

Oh and also this.

In the week leading up to the game video circulates of a couple of Ute players doing fake baptisms in one of their training room tubs. I personally am not offended because religions get made fun of a lot and I made fun of other religions when I was that age. But others don’t take this slight so well. Fans are fired up.

Oh and also this. THE BIG ONE. 

Spencer Hadley, BYU’s starting linebacker gets ratted out to the honor code office by of all people, a Ute fan, who notifies the University of Utah’s compliance office, who chooses not to reveal the violation to BYU until the week of the game, thereby ensuring he doesn’t play in the rivalry contest.

And this is the pinnacle. This was when the rivalry rose to its most toxic point. ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt was so offput by the absurdity of this fan and the Ute compliance folk that he called for “BYU to win by 100.”

Alas it was not meant to be. BYU lost in part thanks to a mysterious holding call on a touchdown return, the footage of which to this day has never been revealed. In the end the BYU crowd was so furious at the loss, at the now-growing losing streak, at perceived officiating injustices, at life as an Indy, at Whitt’s Pac-12 worshipping press conferences, at missing out on recruits like Chase Hansen and Porter Gustin, at the Ute fan who squealed on Spencer Hadley, that the fans rained garbage down on the refs as they left the stadium.

Summary: So you see it really had very little to do with Bronco. What made the rivalry grow to a level it had never reached before was a combination of the games mattering more than ever, of the arrival of social media as a weapon to aggravate one another, and of Utah moving into a bigger and better house than BYU had. That's it.

So what helped calm things down?

The one-year break helped a little bit. And so did the fact that BYU kept losing, honestly. The more BYU lost, in strange, almost unbelievable ways, it started to become less painful and more funny to both sides of the rivalry. Like the people say, comedy is just tragedy plus time. Who among us didn’t turn from tears to laughter during the debacle of the Las Vegas bowl? 

I'm not even sure if Kalani becoming coach impacted things. By 2018 it had been eight years since Utah had been promoted to the Pac-12 and nine years since the two teams had played a game that had implications beyond state pride. Those huge points of friction had started to die down by the time Kalani came around.

Each side got a taste of what it meant to win in 2008 or 2009, when undefeated seasons or top-15 rankings were on the line. BYU fans felt what it was like watching the team fight Utah with the entire reputation of the university on the line during the early 2010s. Those games meant so much to both fan bases. But with the game moving to the beginning of the season; with BYU not having been great for most of the 2010s; with Utah fighting for a bigger prize in the Pac-12 conference championship, the game just hasn’t meant quite as much.

But it will again, someday, matter as much as anything ever mattered. And fans will lose their minds. I’m looking forward to it.