This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Urban Meyer and the Utes should be allowed to talk a little trash. Is there anything on God's green turf more overrated than the effects of smack talk? Than players and coaches saying into open microphones what they guess or think or hope or even guarantee will happen today at Rice-Eccles Stadium or how terrific or lecherous they think their opponents are?

Does it really matter that BYU running back Curtis Brown believes - and says - that Utah's run defense is relatively weak and that the Cougars can exploit the Utes, not just along the line of scrimmage, but, as he puts it, everywhere?

Or that Ute running back Marty Johnson fires back: "Well, I just want to let Ernest know that we are fourth in the MWC in stopping the run and they are last in the conference in rushing. I know his name is Curtis, but he looks and sounds like an Ernest."

Or that BYU receiver Austin Collie tells a packed room of reporters after last week's game in Provo that New Mexico coach Rocky Long told Gary Crowton that Utah is beatable and not as good as it's hyped to be, and that the Cougars will "put a hurt" on the Utes?

Big frickin' deal.

Isn't that what rivals are supposed to think and, then, say out loud about the pond scum-sucking, baby-seal slaughtering mouth-breathers to the north or to the south?

What is this? A picnic?

A tea party?

Sunday School?

Is everyone OK with paranoid coaches who exhort their players to do nothing but compliment their rivals, to figuratively kiss their proverbial buttocks and show them respect, to tell one and all how talented they are and how difficult it will be to win and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

Come on.

It's, it's . . . football.

Some of these players nowadays are automatons who have been programmed to the point of no return. They're polite and friendly and full of sweetness toward the chumps we all expect them to be hating on throughout the run-up to the big game.

Let's get real here.

Nobody actually believes that the Utes, who, for the most part, have behaved so gentlemanly all week regarding the boys in blue, saying the appropriate things, really believe that the Cougars have a shot against them, do they?

BYU couldn't even beat UNLV at home. How are the Cougars supposed to hang with the sixth-ranked Utes at Rice-Eccles? Who believes those same 10-0 Utes doubt that they're going to crush 5-5 BYU? Anybody suspect that Alex Smith, one of the best quarterbacks in the country, is quaking in his cleats over his offense's chances against the Cougar D?

As is usually the case, though, it is the 'dogs who have done most of the public speaking, a la Brown's and Collie's words about Utah's defense.

Why not go ahead and lay it all out there?

Why not say what needs - or, at least, begs - to be said?

There's nothing wrong with trash talk. Particularly when it's spoken before the game. The only problem with the most infamous smack in Utah-BYU history - Lenny Gomes' pump-my-gas quote - was that it came after the Cougars had lost. That's weak. Well, it's weaker, anyway. Bring it strong. Bring it beforehand. And then . . .

Back it up.

Maybe it was a more naive time, but when Joe Namath guaranteed that the Jets would beat the Colts in Super Bowl III, and, next thing, the old AFL'ers actually made good, it automatically nailed the moment into the memory banks of every football fan in the country and into a collective kind of national consciousness.

It raised the stakes.

And the overall interest.

This stage for BYU and Utah obviously is more modest. But victory is still twice as nice, for either side, when true words of honest self-assuredness bubble up and, then, are hammered down.

Besides, like in most cases where one's own version of the truth is spoken, there's really not that much to lose. People who worry about material tacked to a bulletin board leading to a better effort from the other guys or even to their own defeat never really had victory in their hearts.

With the Utes on the verge of traversing a BCS threshold that never before has been spanned, against their fiercest rival, a team that their coach usually won't even mention by name, rather only by the slightly disrespectful "Team Down South," and BYU standing as the only obstacle from them making that history, does anyone in his right mind really think that talking a little trash from the north or the south is going to pour more napalm on an already incendiary crossing of the roads?

Like striking a match and chucking it into a fireball, the effects of a few words, whatever they are, however explosive, from whomever, wouldn't have mattered earlier in the week, and won't matter now.

Smack may create interest from the outside in, but, from the inside out, it rarely creates a win that wasn't already at hand.