I am a BYU fan that had the unfortunate opportunity to take my three young boys to the BYU vs. Utah game and sit just a few rows below the largest section of Utah fans.

I'm not naive enough to think that all Ute fans are as awful as the ones that I was near but the loud ones sure represent the group - like it or not. And I never saw signs that anyone of their better-behaved comrades seemed to mind their behavior.

Most of the first quarter our entire row was asked to stand up in the aisle on the steps (in the middle of the Ute section) while the police and stadium employees restored order after a drunken Ute fan passed out.

For the remainder of the game I witnessed an ongoing verbal assault by a couple of cowardly Ute fans to a BYU fan sitting about ten rows below themselves. I watched the whole thing unfold as the BYU fan turned around and cheered toward the Ute section above him when BYU did something he liked. That was his mistake - he should have kept his cheering toward the field - but that was all he did wrong.

The Ute fans verbally assaulted him very specifically for the remaining three quarters of the game. There were religious slams of course since that is the unoriginal default that gets used by Ute fans toward BYU fans. Their overall assault was relentless and never once did the BYU fan say anything inappropriate to them.

•Darren Hartvigsen,

Alpine