Pranks heat up during rivalry week in Utah


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SALT LAKE CITY — As the hours and minutes counted down Friday until Saturday's renewal of the BYU-Utah rivalry in Provo, fans from both schools went to extremes to get the best of each other - from a towering "Y" flag looming over I-15 in the Salt Lake Valley, to spray-painted lawns, to revenge for spray-painted lawns.

Business leaders at Lendio, with the help of a massive crane from Wagstaff Crane Company, hoisted a 80-foot by 60-foot, 600-pound BYU flag high up, next to I-15 in the Sandy area.

"We've got all of I-15 checking this thing out," CEO Brock Blake said.

Blake said the company acquired the flag from BYU. In years past, it has been hung from the Tanner Building.

Lendio, Blake said, is no stranger to rivalry week exploits.

"We've had goats in our office, we've had a full grass football field, we've had Ute cheerleaders, BYU cheerleaders," Blake said. "Since this was the last one before the hiatus, we figured we had to top it all."

Of course, Ute fans at Lendio and elsewhere didn't react favorably to the colossal display.

"Aggghhh it's horrible to see," Shawn Price said. "It burns my eyes."

Workers who cheer for the University of Utah took stock in the 9,000 red balloons bouncing around the office floor.

"We try to have fun - that's the whole point," Adam Tolman said. "We like to spar back and forth. It's a way to have some good inter-office jabs at each other."

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Elsewhere, some fans were seeking to exact some revenge for last year's pranks.

In Payson, Kelly Swasey and family were busy Friday afternoon adorning their neighbors' yard with BYU posters, stickers, streamers and all things blue and white.

Last year, Swasey said the neighbors painted a red Ute logo on her lawn, just in time for it to be memorialized by Google Earth. The image likely won't be overwritten anytime soon.

The pranking mood also extended Friday to KSL Broadcast House and the home of KSL 5's morning anchor.

Scott Haws was on live TV as he watched official ground crews from the University of Utah spray-painting a Ute logo on his yard.

"Hahaha he's throwing a little bit of a tantrum because he doesn't want to talk about a big-time prank that is going on right now," co-anchor Lori Prichard quipped at the time.

The prank was an act of revenge masterminded by on-air colleague Shara Park, whose desk was covered in blue when Haws was finished with it last year.

Haws said Friday he didn't believe the Ute art would vanish from his property until Spring.

"I like to think I'm an artist, but it's really quite simple," University of Utah event manager Gavin Gough said. "We lay out a plastic sheet that's got a little template. Just gives us an idea, and then I just go at it."

Contributing: Andrew Wittenberg

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