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Before Bronco fans talk too much smack to Cougar alumni in town for the BSU-BYU game under the lights on the blue Thursday night, they might be wise to brush up on their history.

“Brigham Young sent settlers all over the western United States,” Boise-Meridian LDS spokesman Chad Ward said.

One of the first places he directed those pioneers? Yup, Idaho.

“In fact,” Ward said, “the first permanent community in the state of Idaho was a Mormon settlement called Franklin.”

For years – before the establishment of official state lines – the people of Franklin believed and voted like they lived in Utah.

“Almost all these little Mormon towns spread throughout Southeastern Idaho were sent by Brigham Young,” Ward said.

Today, more than 400,000 Mormons live in the Gem State – the second-most of any territory in the union. The town of Rexburg even hosts a satellite campus of that aforementioned university bearing Brigham Young’s name.

One need look no further than the parking lot at an LDS seminary in Meridian for evidence of the tangled web of Bronco and Cougar allegiances in our state: both BYU and BSU bumperstickers decorating nearly every vehicle.

So, who would Ward – our BYU alumnus, Boise native, Mormon church leader and former Boise State teacher – like to see win?

“I am going to take the fifth on that,” he said,

Oh, yeah. Ward’s brother played football for the Cougars and planned to ride his bike from Provo, Utah with a bunch of other reformed Cougar jocks to visit Chad and watch the game.

So, yeah.

“I don’t think I should comment on that,” Ward said.

BYU's 0-2 all-time against BSU. The two teams last played in 2004.