There are very few rivalries in college sports more intense than the in-state rivalry between BYU and Utah. These two schools, which are separated by less than 50 miles, absolutely hate each other.
That was made abundantly clear during Morgan Scalley’s introduction at the men’s basketball game in Salt Lake City on Saturday night.
Visiting Cougars fans completely drowned out the new college football coach at his own school. It was ruthless.
Who is Morgan Scalley?
Scalley is the ultimate Ute. He grew up in Salt Lake City, played football at the University of Utah in the early 2000s, started his coaching career at Utah in 2007 and has been there ever since.
The former defensive back worked his way up from a grad assistant role, to the safeties coach, to the special teams coordinator, to the defensive coordinator and now to the head coach. The 46-year-old has coached 13 All-Americans, propelled 33 players to the NFL ranks, and led one of the top defenses in the conference in eight of the last nine years.
Scalley previously served as the defensive coordinator and the “head coach in waiting” under Kyle Whittingham since 2016. Whittingham recently stepped down. Morgan Scalley was promoted.
BYU fans did not let Utah introduce its new head football coach.
The two most prominent universities in the Beehive State played each other on the hardwood on Saturday. BYU is ranked No. 9 in the country with only one loss. Utah is hovering at .500.
Utes fans have not showed a lot of care for its basketball program this season. Even the Mighty Utah Student Section has not showed up to many games. Fan attendance has been poor. It is rarely a sellout, if ever.
Saturday was different. The Cougars were in town!
Just to compare, 8,339 Utah fans attended the game against top-ranked Arizona. 15,558 Utah fans attended the game against BYU. There were also a lot of visiting fans wearing blue in the crowd.
They made their presence felt.
Morgan Scalley grabbed the microphone to address the raucous crowd at the Jon M. Huntsman Center at halftime. He welcomed the Cougars and called it the “greatest rivalry in sports.”
The first-year head coach got about halfway through his two-minute speech before the crowd got restless. BYU fans completely drowned him out with chants of “Lets Go Cougars!”
New head football coach Morgan Scalley addresses the crowd at halftime of the Utah/BYU game: pic.twitter.com/FGS0jQNVZS
— Jenna Fink (@jennamfink) January 11, 2026
You could barely hear a word he had to say.
“Let’s go cougars!” chants take over the Huntsman Center while Scalley is talking 😂 pic.twitter.com/9e209YBdxv
— CougarBoard (@CougarBoard) January 11, 2026
It doesn’t get much better than that. This is what rivalries are all about.
To make matters worse for Utah, the student section chanted “OVERRATED” at BYU while trailing by four points during the second half. The Cougars defeated the Utes by five. Little brother behavior.