1) Because we all know that your opponent is going to be incredibly biased, we can’t take each other’s opinions on it.
2) Because Yewts are the worst fan base in college football, and put more energy and effort into trying to defame their rival than loving their own team, we can’t even get a fair public opinion (since the first commenter on any BYU article will be a Ute Troll trying to poison the well, as often as not.)

So the the best data to be found on impartially-tabulated cheap plays (maybe the only such unbiased data) is in the form of unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and personal fouls (ie. Not what your rival says, but what the ref says).

The only tabulation I could find was for an actually pretty good stretch of time from 2003-2012.

Utah is number 8 on the list of worst offenders.
Number 5 for teams that had played more than one year in FBS to that point (ie. had a respectable sample size)

BYU is number 36 (or 33 if you require more than one year sample)

Neither is great, but Utah is among the very worst in the country when you take actual numbers instead of biased montages. At least top 10, but really top 5 dirtiest teams in the country.



If anyone wants to find the data from the last 8 years, that would be great. I’d love to see it.

But just to check if an overall penalty trend has continued, I was only able to find it in terms of total penalties assessed over the last five years. Not as good a measure for dirtiness as unsportsmanlike and personal fouls specifically, but Utah has had more penalties per game than BYU each of the last 5 years and an average of 15% more penalties over that time.

They may convince themselves otherwise. They may even be able to sway Twitter and Reddit to believe with them, but Utah is not only dirtier than BYU, they’re one of the dirtiest in the country. Something we all have always known in our hearts 😉