With the Big 12 championship game this Saturday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, local fans can once again help set an example for the nation in keeping religious bigotry out of the stands.
As a kid growing up in New Mexico, I remember wearing a bright blue Brigham Young University hat to my first BYU basketball away game. The home crowd at the University of New Mexico let me hear it. I learned a few colorful phrases that night, even as the fan atmosphere was genuinely fun.
An electric fan experience is part of what makes college athletics such a beloved institution. But it’s also why I feel disappointed when my faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is targeted with “F the Mormons” chants during BYU road games. After the most recent instance of these chants, a fellow BYU fan from Grand Blanc, Mich., Brandi Hicken, took to social media to express her frustration after hearing the derogatory chants in stands just two months after a man rammed his truck into the local Grand Blanc church building and opened fire, shooting her husband and their 5-year-old daughter “simply for being ‘Mormon.’”
Athletic directors and university presidents of the schools where these chants have occurred universally reach out to apologize for this kind of fan behavior. And it is indeed our duty as educators to teach the rising generation this lesson: Too many have suffered and died to pass off religious hate speech as merely part of the sport.
Opinion
That’s why I was particularly impressed with how Texas Tech engaged proactively to ensure such chants didn’t happen on their campus. The men’s basketball coach Grant McCasland addressed the fans before a regular season football matchup with BYU.
“Hey, I love the energy in this place,” McCasland began, “so let’s not lose the energy, but let’s do this in a way that helps our team win.” He continued, “I know everybody has some chants against BYU that are pretty popular. Let’s stay away from derogatory, negative things about them and make it about the Red Raiders. … So, hey, let’s cheer on the Red Raiders, don’t do anything that would give us a penalty, and let’s win this football game.”
Other schools have had university personnel engage directly with offending fans or underscore fan codes of conduct that prohibit targeting others based on race or religion. It’s also effective to simply point out the obvious — that hate speech against an entire religious group inevitably targets fellow fans and student athletes.
Many years ago, after chants flared up during a BYU football game at UCLA, Gabe Rose, then the president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, turned to his peers to “politely inform them” that UCLA’s starting quarterback was a “Mormon, as is his best offensive lineman.” Chastened, the group reverted to more traditional cheering.
As BYU and Texas Tech prepare to face off in the Big 12 championship, we hope individual fans of both teams will take a proactive approach to rivaling the right way. Only days after Brandi Hicken and her family survived that deadly attack in Grand Blanc, Mich., the Big 12 issued a fine for the chants.
The actions of leaders do make a difference, but I also believe just as impactful are the courageous individuals who do the right thing, even if it means not following the crowd. Thankfully, Texans have a reputation for just that kind of courage.
C. Shane Reese is the 14th president of Brigham Young University. He holds degrees from BYU and Texas A&M.
