their attitudes.

One of my closest friends on my mission is from New Zealand. We would talk about college sports (I'm a Ute through and through who graduated from BYU) and he always assumed he was a BYU fan because he was a member of the church. Well he moved here to go to school and enrolled at LDS BC. His first fall he couldn't wait to go to some American football. He went to the BYU-UCLA beatdown in 2008 and despite the score said the game atmosphere was entirely boring. He also and already gotten some of the stereo-typical self righteousness and arrogance thrown his way (mostly because he went to LDS BC and not BYU). I took him to the Utah-Oregon State game and by the time it was over his blood was red. I believe his words to me were, "The atmosphere here is almost like a rugby match back home. I feel like I'm watching the all-blacks." (True story).

Anyway he married into a huge BYU family, converted his wife to the U, and dresses his baby in red. He is just finishing up at LDS BC this summer with very high grades and didn't even apply to BYU. He will be going to U.

I'm not trying to cause a big fight and I'm not trying to troll. Fact is, while I am a big Utah fan and very much dislike BYU, my stance on them has softened over the years. I went to school there so there are things I can appreciate about BYU (although I would never send my kids there). All I am trying to say is for this goal of turning more out of state members into BYU fans to work you have to cut back on some of the self aggrandizing stuff about how superior a BYU education/experience is. BYU is what it is. And it will never run out of quality students. I have lived in New Jersey and Las Vegas and while there were a lot of big BYU fans (Vai, Chad Lewis, & Justin Ena in one, and a BIG time donor in another) there were a handful in each that hated BYU because they felt like no matter where they went to school, if it wasn't BYU, they wouldn't feel like they were as good members of the church.

In all seriousness, love my Utes, but I love my faith more. Wish we could all get a long and let BYU be its thing without sometimes (and I know not everybody or even the majority are guilty of this) making others feel inferior.