Of Mendenhall and Maguire and jokes that didn't work

Those who attended the BYU football team’s fireside Friday night in Las Vegas may have come away wondering what was said in the press conference earlier in the day to denigrate BYU and the LDS Church.

BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall told the audience at the fireside he had spent time talking with Paul Maguire, the announcer from ESPN during the week, and the discussion centered around spiritual matters instead of football. At Friday’s major luncheon and press conference, Maguire was the featured speaker, and he joked about the church and BYU in a manner that made Bronco want to pull him back from the podium.

Mendenhall may have been a little ticked, but to those at the luncheon, Paul MaGuire, wasn’t exactly bashing the LDS Church. What happened is Maguire got up and told some jokes on both UCLA and BYU, kind of poking fun at both schools and their fans. He belabored it a little too long when he should have stopped. He’s no Lou Holtz, who was the speaker last year and is used to giving inspirational talks.

Maguire used the old LaVell Edwards joke that BYU fans bring a 20 dollar bill and the Ten Commandments to bowl games and don’t break either one. He poked fun at how many married players BYU has. He said UCLA fans were bad gamblers because he saw them lined up at the ATM machine. He asked for a question-answer and poked fun at UCLA students because, academically, they didn’t know what that was.

Dumb stuff.

Bronco spoke about this to make a point in his talk. It came off that there was a lot of indignant Mormon bashing at the press conference. It wasn’t exactly so, it was more about a guy trying to be funny and failing. He did so at UCLA and BYU in equal failings.