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Conversations with the Cougars
By: Barrett Baffert
After months of newspaper articles, message board arguments, sports radio breakdowns, and bar stool conversations, salvation is almost upon us. The season opener is drawing nigh. Wilbur waits with baited breath.
Purple prose aside, I’m trying my best to keep this game in perspective but that’s a tough thing to do with season openers. Last year, for example, I was so confident in Willie Tuitama’s ability to pick apart a pair of walk-on Cougar corners that I left Arizona Stadium feeling something that bordered on disappointment. And I wasn’t alone.
Now, of course, I look back favorably on a victory over the, later-to-be-named, 16th best team in the nation but there is one disappointment I just can’t shake. Throughout the 2006 game, small pockets of students in the ‘Zona Zoo decided it hilarious to chant, “F--k the Mor-mons.” Now it’s one thing to use this embarrassingly unoriginal chant in other situations (see such brilliant renditions as: F--k the Devils, F--k the Trojans, and my personal favorite, F--k the Beavers) but involving race, religion, or creed is just plain ignorant. And when you consider that star linebacker Spencer Larson is, in fact, a practicing Mormon, it’s no less than stupid.
This got me thinking. I’m fairly certain that fans wouldn’t chant “F--k the Black Guys” if Grambling were in town and I don’t remember any “F--k the Christians” chants during the 2003 match up with TCU, so what makes Mormon-bashing “acceptable?” More interestingly, how much similar abuse do BYU fan’s take?
To answer these questions and more, I visited cougarblue.com, a message board dedicated to Brigham Young athletics. What I found was that BYU fans, for the most part, are pretty thick skinned. Sure, there are times when the harassment gets to them. For instance, when the Stanford band performed a halftime parody of the Mormon faith – suggesting, among other things, that all LDS members were polygamous – the visiting BYU fans were obviously angry. And, trips to Laramie are never pleasant. In the words of one cougarblue message boarder, “Wyoming fans (are) the worst in the whole NCAA. I would never take my wife and kids to see a game there because I would not feel safe by doing so. I have not encountered nearly as much venom anywhere else.” But BYU fans ask for no pity because, to put it simply, they’ve seen it all before. In fact, this abuse seems to bring out an “us vs. world” mentality.
I also spent time talking about other aspects of Cougar football. The subject I found most interesting was recruiting and squad management. Since Mike Stoops became Arizona’s head coach – and brought with him an indefatigable approach to recruiting – I have become gradually more obsessed with signing classes. Following the soap-opera-inspired decommitments and under-the-radar players who turn out to be stars provides a fascinating story-behind-the-story for every season.
From an outside perspective, however, the major difference I see between Arizona and BYU on this subject is the idea of immediate return on recruitment. Let’s examine the path of four-star 2006 Arizona signee Devin Ross’ collegiate career, for example (some of this is projected expectation, obviously):
2006: Special teams standout
2007: Kick off return specialist, spot minutes at corner and nickel
2008: Front runner to take one of two cornerback openings
2009: Arizona’s second Thorpe Award winner in three years (let me have my fun)
As far as I’m concerned, that’s pretty easy to follow. But then I look at the “career paths” of some of BYU’s players and I feel like I’m trying to read a Grecian street map. Personally, I struggle to keep track of players after their redshirt season so I can’t imagine how hard it is to remember players returning from a mission.
Take Max Hall or Austin Collie, for example. They were recruited in the same class (2004) as Antoine Cason. I find this shocking. You’re telling me that Cason, a guy I’ve watched grow from a no-name frosh into a pre-season All American in four seasons, is about to go up against a quarterback from the same high school class, who is not only untested at the collegiate level but also has two more seasons of eligibility left? And then you take a guy like Collie, who teased BYU fans with a Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Year season, then took off on a two year mission. That has to drive fans nuts.
When I asked fans about this, I learned some pretty interesting things. For starters, according to one fan, only around half of BYU’s roster ever goes on a mission. In fact, if John Beck starts a game for the Miami Dolphins, he will be the first quarterback to ever start in the NFL after serving a mission. That means neither Steve Young, Ty Detmer, nor Jim McMahon ever served a mission (Young didn’t go, Detmer was not a LDS member when he came to BYU, and McMahon was never an LDS member).
Another subject I tried to address was the notion that BYU finds a lot of success because, on average, they field an older roster than their opponent. While I consider this theory to be slightly blown out of proportion, I don’t completely discount its merit. Interestingly, Cougar fans tend to get a little bit defensive on this topic. It’s almost like they embrace the “David vs. Goliath” role so much, that they reject any assertion that a phenomena (for the most part) unique to their roster is, in some ways but not all, an advantage. I imagine they get blasted with “BYU only won because they have older players” arguments all the time (this was a message board, after all). So if the responses were probably a bit “knee jerk”, it’s understandable. But if there is one thing I learned about BYU fans, they whole-heartedly embrace the role of the underdog.
So whether they’re arguing against what they consider to be BCS conference bias or describing the parallels between the BYU Cougar football and the 300, this fan base feeds off those who discount them. And while they’re fairly adept at tuning out derogatory comments about their faith, don’t think for a second that they’ll ignore any underestimation of their football team.
With that in mind, I still believe that Arizona will defeat a talented BYU team on Saturday. I just hope that, should I experience any disappointment, it comes from the performance of the Arizona players and not the fans.
Bear Down and Beat the Cougars
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