BYU football is having a special year. Utah football has fallen on hard times, and those dogs would love to spoil our party. That can't happen.

Consider the recent history of this rivalry:

* The Utah AD trying to marginalize and big-time BYU, refusing to schedule games

* The Utah compliance office sitting on evidence of honor code violations and then reporting shortly before rivalry game, leading to the suspension of a good player

* Utah's basketball coach making bogus claims about player safety and cancelling games

* Urban Meyer making a once-friendly rivalry toxic, refusing to show basic respect to BYU, say its name, having his players and staff pee on BYU urinal cakes and so on

* Kyle Whittingham picking up where Urban left off, expressing contempt for his own alma mater, refusing to say its name, and refusing to call the game a rivalry, instead dismissing it as merely the “in state” game

* Whittingham’s son getting into an altercation with a BYU fan, launching the fan’s cell phone into the stands

* Utah players mocking sacred ordinances performing joke baptisms in the locker room

* Utah fans mocking sacred ordinances while tailgating outside the stadium with sacrament Jello shots

* Utah fans vandalizing the cougar statue and other BYU property

* Utah students passing a blowup doll with a BYU player’s mom’s name on it around the MUSS

* A Utah fan (suspender boy) holding up a sign mocking religious clothing and then confronting Bronco on the field after the game

* A Utah fan/booster prominently mocking Max Hall’s past struggles with addiction

* Many, many Utah fans getting in BYU fans' faces, threatening them, flipping them off, screaming at them (“FU BYU,” “FU Mormons,” etc, etc)

* * *

Also, rivalry aside, consider the fact that the University of Utah and its athletics department are just generally sad and lame:

* The university is rife with anti-Mormon bigotry. A huge portion of Utah’s fan base actually think that when they wear red they are sticking it to their disappointed parents, their disappointed childhood bishop, the BYU admissions office, and/or some other imagined villain that stalks their subconscious. In other words, they are not primarily motivated by love for or interest in the University of Utah or its teams, but contempt for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and by extension its members and the university it sponsors. That's a weird and sad reason to support any team. If you spend your life rebelling against something, you have given that thing a high degree of power over you.

* Many Utah fans transformed overnight from fans of a scrappy MWC team decrying the injustice of the BCS system to new money snobs who were heavily invested in their association with blueblood programs. It was amazing to watch Utah's fans convince themselves that associating with bluebloods made Utah a blueblood, and they proceeded to express absurd levels of pride in their conference, displaying the Pac-12 logo more prominently than their own school's logo and getting hilarious Pac-12 tattoos and bumper stickers. It was equally amazing to watch Utah fans learn only a few short years later that they were never on the same level as the Pac-12's true bluebloods, that they were not worth what their own president convinced what was left of the Pac-12 to demand from ESPN, that Utah should be very grateful indeed for a landing spot in a "truck stop" conference with stadiums full of fans that actually care about sports, and that the Big-10 is never, ever going to call.

* Utah's traditions are either blatantly copied from better, more storied programs (Miami's hand sign, Michigan's calling its rival the TDS), super lame (the Utah Man song is a worse version of the Mickey Mouse March), or frankly trashy (gross, old, drunk ladies dancing topless in the stadium while both fans and stadium staff look on as if that is totally normal)

* Utah is bad at basketball and its fan support is so weak that they had to hang curtains in their gym to make the place feel less empty

* The sign in Utah's locker room announcing that one of the program's "Core Values" is “No DUI’s"

* That awful "Together We Reached" video

* Tacky Under Armor unis

* West concourse dumps

* * *

In short, Utah is the worst. (That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head. What did I forget? I am sure there is more.)

Come on, Cougars! Let's keep it going! Beat Utah!