In sports, as in politics, corporate culture and many other aspects of life, the actions of people at the top carry a great deal of influence.
The presidents of BYU and the University of Utah set the right tone heading into last Saturday’s rivalry football game, which tends to generate a great deal of passion regardless of how each team has otherwise performed.
Both BYU President Shane Reese and University of Utah President Taylor Randall appeared in a video together promoting good sportsmanship. “However hot the rivalry gets, you don’t let the competition get in the way of common humanity,” President Reese said in a statement.
Unfortunately, what happened toward the end of the game did not live up to that ideal. Utah’s athletic director, Mark Harlan, didn’t do sportsmanship any favors after BYU’s last-second 22-21 victory.
After the game, which pivoted on a penalty against Utah that kept BYU’s game-winning drive alive, Harlan made an impromptu visit to the postgame press conference to claim that Utah’s victory was stolen.
“We won this game. Someone else stole it from us,” he said, adding that he was no longer excited about being in the Big 12 conference. He was “disgusted” by the officiating in the game, he said.
The conference subsequently fined Harlan and issued a public reprimand for his comments. Harlan responded with a statement that said the university is proud to be in the Big 12, and he wished BYU well, but he did not apologize for his comments.
In a separate and unrelated incident, a BYU cheer coach was hit in the head with a thrown water bottle and briefly knocked unconscious. The Deseret News reported that some fans were throwing objects onto the field after the end of the game. There are also reports of bad behavior by some BYU fans offering their own brand of vitriol in the stands (or the parking lot).
This isn’t the first time unsportsmanlike behavior has been a part of this historic rivalry. Perhaps one of the most famous incidents happened in 1999, when a fan in Provo tackled a cheerleader who was carrying a large “U” flag on the sideline after a Utah touchdown, starting a brief fight.
So where do we go from here?
Shane Reese and Taylor Randall got it right. And for that matter, the friendship and respect shown between head football coaches Kyle Whittingham and Kalani Sitake is of championship caliber. As Sitake said days before the game, Utah and BYU need each other and are entwined with not just tradition, but also players and coaches.
The BYU-Utah rivalry is one of the nation’s most storied and entertaining annual matchups, whether it’s in football, basketball or any other sport sponsored by the schools. That’s a good thing. The games offer important distractions from the stresses and worries of everyday life. Saturday’s game was especially cathartic, as it came on the week of a contentious election.
But it is just a game — bound by rules and both played and officiated by fallible human beings. Controversial finishes are nothing new. Endless friendly arguments about outcomes, play selection and officiating keep the more engaged part of the fan base busy much of the year.
However, the line between friendly arguments and violence can be thin. Especially in today’s age of uncivil behavior, it’s a line best left untouched.
The global union that represents soccer players issued a report earlier this year about how violence is a growing concern in that sport. A report by Reuters described how flares and missiles hurled from the stands, on-field invaders and verbally abusive fans threaten the safety of players.
We’re not sure how things got that way in much of the world, but it was likely a slow progression of uncivil events in which people took the game to mean much more than the sum of its parts.
American sports have had their share of such incidents going back to the time of sports heroes such as Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. But the advent of social media has likely enlarged the incendiary impact of perceived unfairness.
Competition should never get in the way of humanity, no matter what honor or title is at stake. To allow otherwise would be to risk ruining a good thing.