Perhaps, more importantly, I literally just stated that it's awesome that we're in the Big 12 and I'm glad it played out the way it did.

But let's look at those claims of belittling BYU. For example - there were multiple statements on this board that BYU is already better than most P5s over the last decade. I was curious if it was true, so I went and looked (mostly because I enjoy numbers and stats). Turns out we won 39% of our P5 games, which is subpar. So I disagreed that BYU is already better (over an extended period) than the average P5, but did point out that we've been better than 25-30% of them, which is no small success given the disparity in resources and should be lauded. I also suggested that with the increased resources of P5 affiliation, we would do better and move up those rankings.

So, yes, I'm willing to admit that Utah (football at least) has been better over the last decade than BYU or that BYU hasn't been a top 25 (football) program over the last decade. If you choose to take those statements as belittling BYU, I think it says more about you than about me.

I've also put together a lot of takes supportive of BYU. As a recent example, I used the data from above to point out what a statistical outlier it was to have BYU lose 9 straight to Utah, suggesting that (by relative quality) BYU should have won 3 or 4. The difference is that nobody gets outraged at those posts and so they fly under the radar and you only see or interact with the ones that don't sing BYU's praises.

For me, a lot of being a fan is the chance to enjoy looking at numbers and breaking things down statistically. But the reality is that the numbers never look as good as a fan's perception. That's true whether you're a BYU fan (see above), a Utah fan (they'll tell you they're a perennial Top 25 team now, but they're #29 over the last decade by my metrics), or even an Alabama fan (have a Bama fan friend who claimed Bama has gone and will go undefeated most seasons under Saban, since they're that much better than everyone else; in reality, most years they lose 1 or 2 games).