The love put forth by sports fans can change to hate faster than a team can score a touchdown -- or give one up. It's a conditional business, BYU head football coach Bronco Mendenhall acknowledges.

But it might go without saying that what happened to Cougar defensive coordinator Jaime Hill over the weekend of Oct. 24 is unconditionally wrong. Hill found himself filing a police report and scrubbing eggshells and crusted yolk off his car.

Yes, it happened in polite Provo. And Hill is angry.

"It's actually good there was no one in the house around," Hill said. "It could have been ugly."

Hill's car was pelted, he's convinced, because the Cougars lost 38-7 to the Horned Frogs of TCU. He'd be the first to say the team played poorly, but this? This was personal. His was the only car on the block that was pelted, which makes it obvious to him that a "fan" was sending a message.

The incident was part of what some BYU coaches saw as a weekend of unruly (by local standards, at least) behavior that needs to be nipped in the bud.

Fans reacting harshly to opposing teams is the national norm. While they can come unglued on occasion when the home team doesn't perform -- like the looting and burning in Tucson after Arizona lost the national basketball championship in 2001 to Duke -- they're usually more protective of their own.

In Utah Valley, bad behavior directed at local players and coaches hasn't been seen much. But this year emotions are flowing, and some hardcore BYU fans are still fuming after the team's lopsided losses to TCU and Florida State. The back-to-back disappointment was hard to take. Now, the loyal Cougar base that customarily sells out a 64,000-seat football stadium seems to have spawned a few who are turning against their own in personal ways.

Cases in point:

A couple of football players were taunted going into and coming out of church on Sunday, the day after the TCU loss. That nearly led to blows in one case, according to an assistant coach.

Defensive end Jan Jorgensen was told after the TCU game, by his parents, that quarterback Max Hall's wife was verbally assaulted by a group of BYU fans as she sat in the stands watching the game. They wanted backup quarterback Riley Nelson, a sophomore, to replace her husband -- a three-year starter now on the verge of winning 10 games every year (6-2 this season, with five to play). They said a lot of uncomplimentary things about Max.

Hall has struggled in those two magnified home losses this year and has taken the brunt of the criticism in online chat rooms (including the Daily Herald's Cougarblue.com). Letters to sportswriters, online and even hand-delivered to the Herald office, have been especially critical of the program lately. Fan hostility is on the rise.

One recent letter-writer, Terry Johnson of Eagle Mountain, referred to the TCU game as a "shameful exhibition" and suggested the Cougars were quitters. "Send in the subs," he wrote. "We can do so much better."

Some of this doesn't surprise former Cougar signal caller Robbie Bosco, the leader of the 1984 national championship team and now a prominent fundraiser for the program. The year after that perfect season BYU was 8-2 going into the Air Force game.

When one deep pass sailed beyond a teammate and was caught by an Air Force player, Bosco caught something else: a lot of grief. The love-filled honeymoon for a program that had won 32 of its previous 34 games over nearly three years was over. He was booed.

"It doesn't surprise me, but it is a little disappointing," Bosco said.

It did, however, surprise him to hear of recent transgressions that went beyond mere jeers. He said he was not aware, during his playing days, of teammates or coaches being personally harassed.

"Ridiculous," senior Jorgensen called it. "Fans are always going to be fickle and be up and down, but there's a certain point where it crosses the line. In our own stadium, this stuff is ridiculous."

Some players and coaches are pointing out that the team that won 18 consecutive home games before the Sept. 19 loss to Florida State is now enjoying life more on the road, away from Provo. For Jorgensen, it can be easier to be the visitor because there are fewer distractions -- including nasty fans.

The line between enthusiastic and nasty can be a fine one in sports. BYU in the past has tried to restrain fans from booing teams, players or officials. Former president Merrill J. Bateman issued an edict against what he called poor sportsmanship and inappropriate treatment of guests. He was chided in the press for attempting to suppress healthy fan enthusiasm.

Fan emotions boiled over anyway despite the call for courtesy. In 2004, in the waning days of former coach Gary Crowton's beleagurered tenure, for example, people were escorted out of the stadium for wearing "Fire Crowton" T-shirts. That sentiment was widely shared, and Crowton eventually made his exit, but the tension was palpable for much of his final season.

Restraint is easy when you're feeling invincible, and everything's going well. But it becomes increasingly scarce as fortunes on the field reach low tide, as in the aftermath of this year's Florida State and TCU defeats.

Some argue that paying customers in an open stadium should be free to cheer or heckle at will. And besides, Coach Mendenhall himself told a group at the start of his first season in 2005 -- at the rollout of Provo's "Cougartown" motif -- that he expected fans to make LaVell Edwards Stadium the most difficult arena in America in which a BYU opponent can play. Taken at face value, that could be seen as an invitation to rowdiness.

Yet Mendenhall has expressed displeasure with jeers aimed at the good guys -- like being hit with friendly fire in a combat zone. It happened during his first game as head coach, and he's referenced it several times since.

After the TCU blowout -- arguably the Cougars' most important game of the season -- fan resentment rose to a crescendo not seen since Crowton.

Bosco thought BYU fans might be more frustrated now than during the team's losing seasons because the 14-13 season-opening win against third-ranked Oklahoma raised expectations significantly. It's hard to take the letdown.

"It's unbelievable," said assistant coach Hill. "It's not like we're 0-6. We're 6-2 and still have a lot of goals in front of us. Twenty-one years of coaching and I've never seen anything like it."

Hill said the frame of mind for Cougar players was "fragile" last week, but the bye week was salve on a wound, good for rest and reflection -- and improvement.

The bye may be particularly timely because the Wyoming game tends to be one of the team's least anticipated, particularly when it's played in Laramie as it will be on Saturday.

Some Cowboy hecklers have been known to become Neanderthals when the Cougars come to town, several current and former players will attest. But that's still better than getting harsh treatment from people who are supposed to be on your side, Hill said.

"It's definitely getting to them," Hill said. "When you don't want to play in your own stadium? Come on. These guys aren't getting booed anywhere else."

Mendenhall, 44-13 as BYU's head coach, said he receives a UPS truck full of hateful e-mails as well as phone calls during a season, and he says the venom has not been any more concentrated since the TCU game than at other times.

Still, fans have expressed loads of frustration on call-in radio shows to online chat rooms and water-cooler conversations. The defeat likely ruined any chance of BYU winning a third Mountain West Conference championship in four years, which Mendenhall has said all along was the team's No. 1 goal.

Mendenhall sounded hurt that one of his assistants was a target of harassment. Hill came aboard in 2006 to install a new defensive scheme (3-4) built around BYU's steady corps of linebackers, rather than the secondary-heavy philosophy that Mendenhall brought to Provo but struggled to stock with quality recruits.

Hill was a hero his first season, greatly improving BYU's pass defense. He worked his way up to defensive coordinator last year, and Mendenhall handed over play-calling duties this season.

"He's a guy who's here doing a good job, and has helped us win a lot of football games," Mendenhall said.

Hill was a hero after the Labor Day weekend victory over Oklahoma. Steadily, the scrutiny has grown as BYU's defense has consistently revealed chinks in its armor.

And now Hill is scrubbing egg off his car.

While, statistically speaking, only a small percentage of disgruntled fans engage in obnoxious, rude or illegal activity, it's clear that the mood in Utah Valley is generally more sour than sweet these days when it comes to BYU football.

While the number of negative incidents in Cougartown may be small, it's still too big for Hill and Mendenhall.

Mendenhall summed it up: "I would hold friends, or even enemies, to a higher standard."

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