Saturday, September 17 at the BYU v Oregon football game, the Cougars lost to the Ducks 20-41. This disheartened many BYU Football fans after their recent upset against Baylor on September 10th. However, taking to Twitter the next day, the trending topic was not the loss, but instead a video of a portion of the student section chanting “F*** the Mormons”, repeatedly.
The video, posted by Clay Travis and retweeted by Matt Walsh, shows obvious participation in a chant directed at the BYU football team. Since the incident, the University of Oregon Twitter page has come out with an official statement apologizing for and condemning the behavior of the involved students:
Statement sent out by the University of Oregon
Most of mainstream media haven’t covered this story, only smaller outlets including Deseret News, Outkick, and others on Twitter have made any reports. The lack of action by any major news outlets such as CNN and ESPN has drawn heavy criticism from viewers.
Just a few weeks ago, everyone was talking about how Rachel Richardson, a Duke volleyball player, made accusations that fans in the BYU student section were “racially heckling” her throughout the whole match. These accusations have yet to be corroborated, and many reports from the Cougar Chronicle, BYU, and the Deseret News state that the incident never happened with supporting evidence and witnesses.
This comparison may call into question the veracity of those in mainstream media claiming to be objective in their reporting. This is not to compare the incidents as they’ve claimed to happen, but more so to call attention to the bias present in jumping onto a story within hours and waiting for more details to come out for another.
We at the Cougar Chronicle, and its founding organization BYU Conservatives, do not blame anyone at this game or the University of Oregon for the slandering remarks, except for those directly involved. Just as we do not believe, even if the allegations from Rachel Richardson were true, that those over 5000 people attending the game should be implicated in any more frivolous accusations of racism.
The Cougar Chronicle is an independent student-run newspaper and is not affiliated with Brigham Young University or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
