I'm an Aggie fan and here's my take.

THE SHORT AND EASY ANSWER: you've kicked our butts on the gridiron for 30+ years. It sucks to lose repeatedly. Prior to Lavell (a former Aggie, which just adds insult to injury), the Aggies used to beat you guys up plenty. It sucks watching your once proud program get clobbered for so long by a team led by one of your own. Older Aggie fans often point to getting freezed out of the old WAC by the Cougs (and Utes). We might not have wandered the CFB wilderness for decades if we originally got in. Shoulda woulda coulda...

Even now when we've made very real, very visible, and very hard sacrifices to make our program competitive again, the majority of Coug fans STILL talk down to us (and sometimes go out of their way to do it) and insist we're an easy win and that we'll soon go back to the cellar. Even your players, former and current, do this (That Derik Stevenson hate letter in October was a load of laughs.). You don't actually believe that's endearing behavior, right?!




THE LONG AND HARD ANSWER: This is where it gets complex and nuanced (and highly subjective depending on the Aggie fan you speak with, so I insist you take it with a grain of salt).

First off, in case you couldn't already tell, I see the Cougs as very smug. Yeah, you have history and tradition, cool, but... What have you done lately? That's what college football is all about. Your players keep talking the team up to the point where it's silly and they keep going 8-5. Shut up and win. Then talk.

I don't give a rip about your natty from 30+ years ago or Ty Detmer winning the Heisman trophy the year I was born. It's old news. Face the here and now, please. It's even more irksome when Mendenhall repeatedly talks about winning a national championship even though it's not remotely realistic for you guys as an independent. Am I off base, here? I think you guys plateaued under Bronco a long time ago.

Secondly, many USU fans are faithful members of the church, and it drives many of them nuts knowing that the Cougs essentially are the face of the faith to so many non-members. Whether we like it or not, that's just how it is. And I gotta tell ya... I hate it when:

-Nacua throws multiple sucker punches to the back of a defenseless player's head (don't care who started the fight, it looks BAD on national TV for a religious institution's team to behave that way)

-Max Hall goes on an angry, very public rant not befitting of a sportsman. It's one game, dude. Chill.

-Mendenhall mixes religion with football (c'mon, it's annoying).

-Many of my friends, who are BYU fans, keep talking the same pre-season hype year in and year out, but not only don't know much about the opponents on their schedule, they don't know much about the game itself! Bandwagon fans irritate me and many others I know, too.

-Those same BYU friends refuse to give credit where it's due. They never say "the better team won" when the Cougars lose. There's always an excuse. That gets old fast. Whether they win or lose, I hate poor sports.

I'll concede a lot of different fan bases have these same complaints about other programs. One can easily have a million different threads of Tide fan hates Georgia or USC fan hates UCLA, but I digress. So in that regard, BYU (or Utah State) is really no different than any other fan base.

With that being said, I've grown up around you guys and have seen multiple variations, but those are some of the most common threads I've seen... and I don't like them at all.