perspective of those living in Ute country. I Certainly did not mean to insinuate that you do not carry the hurt of all cougar nation at a Utah loss. Only saying the hurt of being in Utah under such circumstances is excruciatingly acute. Your last paragraph here confirms my observation that experience with LSU and SEC fans would be the type of influence that might float me the opposite direction, but I don't have those experiences.

I get it and I feel like I should agree with you logically, but RIGHT NOW my heart tells me I would pick any guarantee of a victory over Utah no matter the odds that we might win anyway. It has been too long and the absence of a win has let the UTes grow potent in the territory we owned for decades. If even a third of our recruits came from the south and Texas I might be swayed but that is not the case. We get our recruits from Out West in Utah and PAC 12 country. In fact many grew up BYU or Utah fans but they care more about their future in the sport than their fandom. Understandable. Imho losing so consistently to Utah is eroding our recruiting foundation over time. We have a small window to show that BYU under Kalani is not going to lose to Utah the way we have for 15 years. Even one win, in year two of his leadership is a banner that things are now different. I take a guarantee on that any day.

And youre right, RR4L all day long! Kahuku is another location that BYU should have locked up but was losing ground there until recently with the Kalani hire. Utah has nearly as strong of ties out there as BYU does. I want to see my boys switching to Blue instead of continuing in Red or going elsewhere.