The BYU fanbase is falling apart. Are Ute fans ready to pick up the pieces?

[jrj84105]

?

[KiYi-Ute]

Nope.

[ironman1315]

There are a few that I like. Others can suck it.

[Duhwayne]

This is why I root for BYU to win 7 games. Bad enough the reputation they give Jazz fans. Last thing I want are BYU bandwagoneers in RES.

[jrj84105]

It’s already been happening.

Say the Jazz fanbase is 50/50 Utah and BYU fans and that fan culture sucks.

At what point does in-migration of BYU fans change the overall vibe of the Ute fanbase? I’d say that initially the incoming fans would assimilate to the Ute culture but at some tipping point there’s be enough in-migration to start changing the culture- for the worse.

Let’s say 25% of BYU fans make the jump. That would put the new Ute fanbase at 80% Ute and 20% converted BYU. Does that fanbase look more like our current fanbase or the Jazz?

Financially it would put our fanbase, attendance, and donor resources ahead of the Arizona schools and Colorado taking us from about 10th in the PAC to 7th.

I think the in-migration is going to happen, but which subset of BYU fans come over depends somewhat on how we receive them. If we act like dicks, we’re going to get their dicks. If we act like decent fans, we’ll get their decent fans.

[Utah]

I don’t think it will be that big of a change and I don’t think BYU will lose many fans. 

 

Heres why: about 60% of Utah is LDS. The activity rate is about 35% and dropping. That means in Utah, only about 20-25% of the population is active LDS (.6*.35=.2, 20% of the population is active LDS). And seeing how the LDS Church won’t announce their stats in GC anymore, it’s probably dropping fast. A GA said in a leaked video that 70% of young men in the LDS church don’t serve missions.The Church is hemorrhaging members. 

 

So what? you ask. Well, you are a BYU fan for 1 of 3 reasons:

 

1 – You are LDS, and in church they teach you that you much root for the Lord’s school and you take that to heart and root for the Lord’s school 

 

or

 

2 – You are old as hell and you grew up when BYU was actually good in the 70’s, 80’s and first half of the 90’s and were a fan of BYU 

 

or

 

3 – You are a kid of one of the two above and you’ve been brainwashed to root for BYU (and I’m not saying that is bad. My kids are all Utes because of my brainwashing). 

 

SSSSooooooooo, what the frick are you getting at apostate Utah? 

 

I think the BYU fanbase is what it is. I don’t think it is growing, but I don’t think it will shrink either. The people in category one will grow tired of losing and just fade away as more members leave the church and they have more and more callings heaped on them…they will just be too “busy” for sports. 

 

The people in category two will still root for BYU, but will start to root for USC or Washington or whatever school they live close to as their “primary” school and BYU will still be a game they watch, but their fandom will switch to another school and they might still be anti-Utah fans…now they will be USC/Oregon/ASU/Washington fans who hate Utah. 

 

The kids in category three will root for Utah or USC or whoever their friends root for. They will be great fans whoever they decide to root for. 

 

TL/DR: 

 

The LDS Church drives BYU fans and the LDS Church is not growing/having the same influence that it had in the past, therefore their fans will dimish over time anyways as the LDS Church and BYU become more and more irrelevent. 

 

Either way, I don’t think a lot of those fans will migrate to Utah. I think they will fade away into the LDS Church or into another fanbase. 

[Utah]

Also, seeing how Utah is quickly becoming less and less LDS, I don’t think you will get any “culture” change with the LDS weirdness. The people that will come to the Utah fanbase are non-members, former members, and members who are “LDS” but still drink and are normal people. 

[Puget Ute]

There are plenty of very active, believing lds  church members who are Utah fans and greatly dislike byu. Utah fans being ‘less worthy’ members is a byu  fan mischaracterization.

[Utah]

Same as the poster above. Where did I say that Mormons weren’t Utah fans? Where did I say that Utah fans were less worthy? 

You are arguing points I never made. 

NOW, I did say that CURRENT BYU fans who IN THE FUTURE would leave BYU fandom and migrate to Utah would not be you current die-hard, hard line, Russ speaks for god Mormons. 

The mormon faith is failing. Those that stay in will tend to be hardline Mormons. Those people I don’t ever see being Utah fans. 

[Puget Ute]

Relax and take a step back.

You said, ” The people that will come to the Utah fanbase are non-members, former members, and members who are “LDS” but still drink and are normal people. ”

I added an additional seperate category, fully LDS people who don’t drink, but who simply disdain byu-P for other reasons. 

And I have known Big Russ for a very long time, and spoke to him a few weeks ago. Believe me, he is a Utah fan.

[Chidojuan]

Exactly. Assuming Tony invited me, I’d go to 69 behind the dumpster with a Red Bull or something like that. Nothing wrong with teetotalers.

[Chidojuan]

[Utah]

So, BYU fans and Mormonism have nothing in common? 

[Chidojuan]

Of course they do, but it is fallacious to assume that one is the cause of the other.  Are all Notre Dame fans Roman Catholic?

[Utah]

Come on man. Fallacious? What mistaken belief is there in BYU and Mormons being intertwined? Holy cow. And where did I say all BYU fans were Mormon? 

No need to be defensive. Don’t be that guy. It is what it is. 

I can tell you read FARMS though. Use big words, create strawmen, move the goalposts, argue points that I didn’t make. 

You doing great kid. Jesus is proud. 

[Chidojuan]

The meme was a more light hearted attempt to address “You are LDS, and in church they teach you that you must root for the Lord’s school and you take that to heart and root for the Lord’s school.” It was not meant to be defensive. I do hope Jesus is proud of me though. I love Jesus. WWJD.

[Chidojuan]

[Utah]

This is incredibly ironic. You are a true and faithful servant, blind to the irony of your post. Did you come up with that yourself, or did Russ send out approved meme’s for church use.  

[Chidojuan]

I must have missed the irony.  Did @jrj84105 not create a false dichotomy inferring that BYU fans would jump ship to Utah?  BTW, the Fallacy Referee is a well established meme.  I’m sure “Russ” would probably like it, but that’s neither here nor there.  What exactly am I a true servant of?

[Tony (admin)]

What does this topic even mean?

[jrj84105]

Take a gander at cougarboard.

[Chidojuan]

We must not be looking at the same board.  I see fans going through various stages of grief regarding the descent into mediocrity.  Most of them are never going to jump ship to Utah, and we shouldn’t want them to.  I’d rather have promising recruits jumping ship to Utah, which does seem to be the trend, although it is happening much more slowly that I’d like.

[Chidojuan]

Real fans stay fans until they die.  If you’re jumping ship because your team sucks, you were never a true fan to begin with.

[Duhwayne]

You’re hitting exactly on why their dick fans leave first. Jumping early means people who need to cheer a winner, and be dicks about it. Honestly it’s part of why I don’t want stadium expansion–make the price of abandoning BYU more expensive.

Another truth however is that it’s easier to switch when your kids have already. Generational turnover explains this too.

[Ute Bc]

I prefer/predict that their fans will just die out. As their product becomes more and more irrelevant new fans won’t be created. Their fan base will shrink and Ute fandom will increase. 

I suspect USU has a better chance of increasing their fan base than the Y does. 

[GameForAnyFuss]

This. The blue hairs at BYU-P will never align themselves with Utah – they’ve been hating Utah forever and telling others why they should hate Utah too. They will die praising BYU-P. 

If BYU-P athletics went away, they would mostly gravitate to USU because they perceive it as more righteous than Utah, which they’re conditioned to believe is a den of iniquity.

But the truth is, the BYU-P is incredibly old and dying off quickly, so none of this is likely to become an issue. 

[jrj84105]

There are some older BYU fans who gravitated that direction just because they wanted to watch good football played on a more national stage.  We weren’t doing that in the 80s.  I’d say many are NFL or other pro-sport fans first and casual BYU fans second.  

They’re older, have fewer family obligations, and have disposable time and income to spend attending and watching games.  We need to pull those guys in before the croak or entirely tune out.  

It seems like too big a portion of our fanbase is hellbent on some kind of fanbase purity even if that stands in the way of growing the program to where it’s not such an uphill battle competing in the PAC-12.  We need all the resources we can get.

[Chidojuan]

The “true fan” comment was not meant as an allusion to fanbase purity. More just to illustrate the sort of people that would be jumping ship over to Utah, which I’m honestly fine with to a certain degree. Whatever floats your fandom boat, but fairweather fans do drive me a little crazy sometimes. There’s an Alabama fan in my office, and he’s insufferable about their record, but when I ask him what he thought of a certain play, he’ll tell me he didn’t watch the game. When they start losing, he’ll jump ship to whoever is winning. Fanbase purity is definitely an extreme, but I can’t help but hope we get some people, maybe even the types you mentioned, that will stick with the program through thick and thin like many of us have.

[jrj84105]

BYU and Utah fandom has been like two separate towers. Their tower is shrinking.  The height of our tower  probably is what it is with a certain number of high-level avid fans that’s not likely to grow much, but it will start to look more like a pyramid as the base of less committed fans expands. That looks a lot more like a typical state flagship university with a plurality of less avid fairweather fans.  But those fairweather fans in big enough numbers still bring a lot of revenue and resources.

[ladyinred]

as a side note, i love that 69 behind the dumpster with tony is a known thing. i’ll see you there too!

 

byu fans i know of think UofU campus/Res is full of heathens and drunken debauchery. they are not all totally wrong. i don’t think an in-migration of byu fans is realistic. there is too big of a growing culture gap between slc and utah county. the fact that they hate us suits me just fine, i don’t like them spying my girly beers.

[Author]

Posts