I love sports. Always have. And having grown up and played in Utah Valley and attended and worked for the university, I lean toward the Cougars, though I cheer for other Utah teams, too.

I still enjoy and hate the paradox of bringing people with standards way short of BYU's to Provo to pump up a sports program, which the church holds up as its second missionary tool, in the hope that the gospel might create a group of sports fans who differ in their tenacity from the red-clad fanatics up north. Seventeen years of working in BYU sports security and traffic direction taught me the similarities between Ute and Cougar fans.

Now we have print and electronic media ads for U. sports that have Ute football players coming into our homes and kidnapping us if we have something else to do on Saturday afternoon.

And we see the long-ordained super Jazz fan spouting his views. If he bopped me on the head for not standing up and screaming, as he seems to think is his sacred duty, as a true fan, I'd be fetching an usher to have him thrown out. But that'll never be a problem since I don't expect to ever be able to afford seats where Super Fan sits.

I listen to sports radio going to work sometimes until I can't stand it anymore, for two reasons: (1) I'm about as avid a sports fan as I think it's healthy to be, and (2) I find it amusing that those people and their "true" listeners seem to think that what they are doing is actually important, as something besides an occasional diversion from real life.

Richard Decker

Orem

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