Players don't care about the game. That's what I have heard when I tutored them then I got to travel with the team to Colorado on the team plane to help prepare the players for finals. But all they talked about was the championship game against UW and no one talked about BYU. On-campus during the week, not one professor mentioned the game. The students I talked to were like no I am not going to the game we will win. But when I grew up in Utah county and went to BYU when Lavell coached BYU every professor and students talked about the game. I was with the students that walked the campus at night to stop Utah students from painting the statues.  

Growing up during the 80's hay day of Lavell it was a guaranteed win over Utah. Now that I have gone to both Universities you can see the difference in talent at Utah compared to the Y. I got off my mission in 94 started back at BYU. This was the scores when I attended BYU. Kyle said that there is more pressure on BYU to win if BYU won its no big deal for Utah. He said he sees if Utah winning BYU will go 0-4 against the P5 teams because the BYU players are more amped up for the game. He said that Utah coaches don't call it a rivalry game. 

 From freshman year 2-year mission credits from AP classes and attending BYU wouldn't you know BYU was 3-4 against Utah

My Ute friend sent me this when I asked if he wanted to go to the game with me since my new wife is a pharmacy Tech and she works that night he said Utah leads the series 61-34-4, winning percentage: 61.62% Utah winning percentage. 

BYU fan: But those first six games don't count. We were only an academy back then. 

OK, Utah leads the series 58-31-4, winning percentage: 62.37% Utah winning percentage.

BYU fan: Those stupid old games don't count. I don't care what happened in the 1930s. What about since St. Lavell invented the forward pass?

OK, since 1972 BYU leads the series 26-20, a winning percentage of 56.52%. He went on to say It's been said before but bears repeating. This single game is BYU's entire season. Full stop.

If they lose next week (especially if they lose big), they are immediately relegated to the Bumfark Bowl at the end of the year. They will literally have nothing left to play for. As a result, we're going to get a team that's jacked through the roof for this one game because it's all they've got. That level of intensity can lead to all sort of weird things happening.

For Utah, I'll be disappointed if we lose, but it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme. Utah can lose this game and still play for a conference title while playing a fun schedule. My reaction to a loss would most likely be a disappointed shrug, and not much more.

I'd much rather play against a solid P5 team that gives us a good OOC challenge, but without the insanity that BYU and their "one-game season" brings.

Just my $.02. Can't wait until next week is over and we're past the Zoob nuttiness.