Cache Valley almost un-American in its lack of rabid sports fans

By Jake Williams

December 20, 2007 | Mitt Romney is funny. He had the last words during the Nov. 28 CNN/YouTube Republican Debate, and they had nothing to do with the typical political topics of that evening: He didn't talk about the national budget and he steered away from welfare and immigration. Instead, Romney's debate-ending statement was a shot at former New York mayor and current New York Yankee fan Rudy Giuliani.

An avid Boston Red Sox fan, Romney ended the fiercely battled political event by declaring, "Like most Americans, [my family] love[s] our sports teams and we hate the Yankees."

Americans like their sports. Also on Nov. 28, popular ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy, held a seven-hour Q&A marathon chat to raise money for the V Foundation, a cancer research fund. The incredible part of his 24,000-word chat is that there is enough interest in sports nationally to keep men and women from having productive work days for a full seven hours. Several readers thanked Simmons for giving them an excuse to take a nice long break on the job. Some also donated.

These two incidents, occurring within hours of each other, are examples of how the average American views sports. Maybe we don't eat, breathe and sweat sports every second of our lives, but there is something intrinsically attractive about the world of athletic competition. Perhaps it is the fact that at the end of every game or match a clear winner is declared. Perhaps it's because, despite the clearly defined victor, we can still argue for days on end that our team should have won.

To the novice, sports can be simple almost to a fault. One blog entry by a Salt Lake City resident who goes by Timmy "The Hobo" dismisses the National Basketball Association as "nothing but a bunch of [players] running back and forth." To an avid fan, sports are too complex to ever fully understand. Each episode of World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel begins by describing Texas Hold 'Em as a game that "takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master." The Hobo and the Travel Channel are each right in their own light, and perhaps that's why sports are a multi-billion dollar industry: Each fan can get whatever they want out of a sporting event. If you invest the time to learn the nuances, you'll appreciate the complexity of the competition, and if you just want a distraction between parts of a conversation, the back-and-forth will keep your dates from developing those awkward silences.

But Cache Valley is a different animal.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association lists Utah State University as the 114th most attended venue for college football games out of 119 Division I-A schools in 2007. Brigham Young University and the University of Utah ranked 27th and 54th, respectively. With attendance numbers like these, it's easy to understand why Utah schools struggle to recruit top prospects, or blue-chippers to use vernacular.

Ironically, Logan recently opened an Iggy's sports bar. Three monster television screens show all the big games for diners enjoying traditional American cuisine like hamburgers and pasta, while a few smaller screens show less important events. On Dec. 3, for example, the New England Patriots visited Baltimore to continue their quest for a perfect season against the Ravens. The big screens carried that game while the Utah Jazz hosted the Miami Heat on the smaller TVs. The Patriots and Jazz both won, in case you missed the games.

If you did miss them, you aren't alone. In cities like Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland ­ tops in the NBA as far as average attendance per game ­ you'd expect Iggy's to have a line out the door for a good seat to watch games like that, but in Logan there was a very different scene: empty tables. There was no wait that night, even though both games were expected to be closely contested.

Dec. 3 was closer to the rule than the exception for the Logan Iggy's. During game three of this year's World Series between Romney's Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies held Oct. 27, there were empty tables and open seats at the bar. Colorado faced almost certain elimination if they lost the game but no fans showed to witness their ultimately failed attempt to steal the game at home. The final score was Boston 10, Colorado 5, and the Logan sports scene 0.

There are many reasons why Cache Valley isn't conducive to a healthy, sports-crazed atmosphere. Some are cultural, some are environmental and a few are a lot more difficult to explain.

The most obvious reason why Cache Valley doesn't spawn sports fanatics is the dominant Mormon religion. I'm a bit rusty on my doctrinal knowledge, but I'm pretty sure the New and Old Testaments are empty when it comes to encouraging God's children to sit at home watching athletic competition.

Another disadvantage to sports in a particularly religious culture entails choosing between attending church on Sunday mornings and following the NFL. Football is the most watched sport in America, but Mormons miss almost all the live action on Sundays attending their services.

Fortunately, Monday Night Football introduced a way for Mormon football fans to watch one game live per week. Unfortunately, Mormon family home evening is held at the same time. It's as if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints held a meeting to devise a plan for whittling professional football out of its members' lives. Of course this isn't why Sunday and Monday church services were scheduled, but there are bound to be a conspiracy theorist or two who will jump all over this idea. Anyway, professional football is out as an easily followed sport in Cache Valley. Next is baseball.

Utah lacks a professional baseball team. Sports are a highly emotional experience when the fan feels a connection with the team. That connection can come from the team employing a few hometown players and from witnessing games in person ­ it's different than on a TV. But when your town has no team, it's hard for either to happen. Here come the Jazz.

The Utah Jazz are Utah's only professional sports team and consequently enjoy a large following. According to ESPN.com, the Jazz enjoy the fifth largest average home-game attendance in the NBA ­ more populous cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and Dallas take the cake while Miami is sixth. But this attendance milestone is less impressive than it seems at first glance. It seems that Jazz attendance totals are inflated by a ‘lack of options' variable.

Brandon Bertsch, an Ohio native who attended USU for two years, frequented Jazz games during his time in Utah. "I like sports, I wanna watch games in person," he said, "but Utah doesn't have any other teams. What else can I do but watch the Jazz when they play my Cavs?"

Bill Simmons, the same ESPN writer who held the marathon chat, seems to back up Bertsch's comments. In February 2007 Simmons wrote a column called "Rules for being a true fan." Rule No. 18, under the heading Loyalty, supports what Bertsch said.

"18. If you live in a city that has fielded a professional team since your formative years, you have to root for that team. None of this, 'The Bengals weren't very good when I was growing up in [Cincinnati], so I became a Cowboys fan' crap," wrote Simmons. However, if you don't have a hometown team, it's unclear whom to root for.

Another reason sports don't flourish in Cache Valley is our weather. Bertsch is from Akron, where the snow drifts are high, so winter conditions weren't an issue when his team played our team 100 road miles south of Logan, but for a student from Arizona, for example, a few inches of frosty precipitation can cause a fan to watch the Suns-Jazz game on TV instead of in person.

One final possible explanation for a low sports following in Cache Valley is hard to put a finger on. USU senior Travis Worwood doesn't watch games often, but when invited to Iggy's recently to celebrate a friend's birthday, he accepted. "The only reason it sounds fun to me is because you'll be there," he said to the friend.

It's a recurring theme for casual Cache fans: emphasizing the social interactions during a game rather than what is occurring on the field, course or court. Maybe this is another result of the dominant religion, but that's a stretch. Whatever the reason, Cache Valley fans tend to watch games differently than other Americans if they watch the games at all.

Sports can teach the principles of competition, fair play, hard work, and even math to America, especially its youth, but it isn't a necessity to these ends. Children who don't enjoy sports can be just as mature as their counterparts. Maybe Cache Valley would benefit from an increased following of athletic competition and maybe it wouldn't, but we should at least try to understand the reasons for our differences from the rest of America, the country that loves its sports teams and hates the New York Yankees.

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