Eye of the Beholder
Those were quite the pictures of Jamie Whittingham mixing it up with BYU fans after Saturday’s Ute-Cougar game.
Quite the inconclusive pictures.
The photos, published Tuesday, show the Ute football coach’s wife and their daughter near to some guys who seem to be scaring them. But whether the disturbance is actually directed at the Whittinghams is hard to tell. Whether Jamie Whittingham instigated the confrontation is merely a matter of speculation.
If you’re a Utah fan, it’s clear aggression by unruly BYU fans; if you’re a BYU fan, it’s just some guys getting rowdy but not necessarily threatening anyone. Maybe the fans are trying to get down to the field; maybe they’re harassing the coach’s wife.
You take from it what you want.
Which is really what the the rivalry seems to be about.
It’s the same with Max Hall’s comments – you read into them what you want. Saying he hates Utah doesn’t make Hall a bad person unless, of course, you want him to be. It doesn’t make him a saint, either. He may have meant what he said, and he may have misspoken.
The problem with all this rivalry business is that people always generalize when they’re talking about the other side (including Hall in his remarks on Saturday, which he later amended).
“Utah fans are (fill in the blank).”
“BYU fans are (fill in the blank).”
I figure maybe the best thing for now for fans to stop debating and live with it.