I didn't live in Utah and my parents didn't go to BYU. I didn't start watching BYU until the 1983 Holiday Bowl win over Missouri. The last second TD catch by Steve Young was so exciting for me as a teenage football player with dreams of glory. So I started following BYU more the next year just as a casual observer of a fun team. Then they went undefeated and ranked #1.

That's when I started taking abuse from school mates who were dissing on BYU. They attacked me bc I was Mormon and they assumed I cared deeply about BYU. I didn't really, but I certainly wasn't going to let them rip on the Church or the Church's school. But in the process of defending BYU so much, I became more and more invested in the team and really became a solid fan. Our HS team took us to UNM games whenever they had a home game that coincided with our games in Albuquerque. One that we hit was BYU coming to town in 1985- again I took lots of abuse and had to defend "my" school. BYU killed them and I gloried in it over my teammates.

I started at BYU in 1988 and eventually graduated undergrad and law school there, and now I'm a fan for life.

But I initially became a BYU fan because of anti-Mormon sentiment during 1984.