A Ute grad and played for them in the 90's and is an incredible guy and very respectful with the rivalry. He was also a bishop in a BYU YSA ward and loved it and wants his kids to go to BYU.

I also live in SoCal so I don't come across as many Ute fans and the rivalry isn't in my face like it is in Utah. And the few clients I have who are Ute grads are actually really cool guys. So my experience has been different.

But last weekend I had an ugly experience with a Ute fan who was clearly Anti-LDS. We were cleaning our church and for context, our church building is right by some awesome hiking/running/biking trails so our parking lot is usually full most Saturdays with people using the trails.

A high school cross country team was stretching right in front of our main entrance on the cement in the shade. I thought it odd since there is plenty of grass and trees for shade, but whatever. As several of our members were walking into the church to clean it, the coach of this high school team was swearing a lot. I didn't hear it as I came in the church from a different entrance. But anyway, one of our members politely asked him to not use that language on our church grounds around young kids (as families were showing up to clean). He was really rude about it and told our member off.

Five minutes later a lady in our ward was out cleaning the glass on the main entrance doors and she overheard him trashing on our church and telling his team (about 20 high school kids) that we're all hypocrites. So she came in and told me about him (and also told me about the swearing) and asked me to go say something. I don't like being confrontational because I used to be much more hot-headed in my 20's. So I really try to avoid confrontation. But she asked me to please say something to him so I finally went out to talk to the guy and you guessed it, dude was wearing a Utah Utes shirt. I almost couldn't believe it because I almost never encounter Ute fans down here. Anyway, when I came outside there were all just getting up and started walking to their cars so I didn't even have to say anything. But I could hear him giving his runners a hard time about not being able to calculate their mile time and loudly boasting: "Let me teach you some MBA math that I learned in during my MBA program". Oh boy.

I just found it rich that the dude had his whole team park in our parking lot, and then had them stretch right in front of our church doors while loudly swearing around young kids and families. He then trashes our church to his whole team. Such a loser.

Most of my Ute interactions have mostly been positive, but this one really left a sour taste in my mouth.