Big 12 Fines Colorado for Anti-Mormon Chants During BYU Game

This is one of those cases where sports, tribal identity, and deeper social prejudices all collide in a stadium-sized echo chamber. The Big 12’s move is partly symbolic—$50,000 is pocket change in the grand economy of college football—but symbols matter. The reprimand serves as a line in the sand: trash talk is part of the game, but religious bigotry is not supposed to be.

The chants themselves are a reminder of how quickly “fandom” can slip into mob behavior. Strip away the jerseys, and you’ve got thousands of people bonding over a shared disdain for someone else’s identity. That’s a human pattern as old as campfires and war drums. In this case, Mormonism is the lightning rod, but the same dynamic has targeted Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and just about anyone who can be othered.

Deion Sanders’ response—blaming “intoxicated kids” and offering an apology—has the right shape, but it risks downplaying the cultural undercurrent. Alcohol loosens tongues, yes, but those words were already sitting on the shelf. If anything, the Big 12 fine highlights that this isn’t just about one ugly night; it’s about setting norms going forward.

There’s also an irony here: BYU, once excluded from conferences for being “too religious” or “too different,” is now fully inside the Big 12 family. The reprimand and fine essentially signal, “Your faith gets protection under the same umbrella as everyone else.” That’s a small but meaningful shift in the history of Mormon representation in college athletics.

The broader lens: stadiums are like pressure cookers for American identity politics. They concentrate rivalries, loyalties, and prejudices into a few hours. What leaks out in chants is often what simmers beneath.

Curious angle to explore next: whether this incident becomes a turning point in how conferences deal with fan behavior. Imagine if schools started losing home-game privileges or television revenue over discriminatory chants—that would put real teeth into the rules. Would fans self-police then, or would the mob mentality just adapt in quieter ways?