I hope you’re all through with the Max Hall debacle. I sure am. It’s high time we forget how much he hates everything about the University of Utah and why. There’s no point for us to continue wringing our hands over whether his family did or did not get treated badly during 2008’s Utah/BYU game at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Few think it’s even possible that Max Hall’s mother did not have a beer spilled on her by unruly Utah fans back in 2008. But, let’s not quarrel over that.

Let’s let bygones be bygones and be done with all the drama concerning one of the classiest college football players of all time, Max Hall. Heck, if I can forgive him for waiting a full year to tell the world how he was justified in his hate toward all of Utedom, you can, too.

I can’t speak for any of you, so, just take it as a suggestion that we move on with our football lives and let Max Hall know we understand that he was actually speaking to that rare minority of Ute fan who is sober, considerate and charming during BYU/Utah football games. He called all Ute fans “classless” as a result. Regarding the word “classy,” btw, there’s another Max Hall T-shirt out there that borrows from the movie The Princess Bride—the “I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means” T-shirt.

The good news is that we’re not alone in Max-world, where whole institutions lack the class he eminently defines. For instance, last year at this time, while speaking about the University of Arizona, he told the Deseret News that his uncle Danny White (Arizona State University football legend, former Dallas Cowboy and former Utah Blaze head coach) and his grandfather Wilford “Whizzer” White (the ASU football legend not to be confused with the late Supreme Court Justice Byron “Whizzer” White) “don’t really like U of A. Playing at ASU and being spit on and having beer spilled on them, and all that stuff. ... But I think [Arizona] coach [Mike] Stoops has done a very good job with them. They’re a classier program than they’ve been in the past.” Did that Cougar take on some leopard spots or what?

All that “stuff?” Is that like the “nasty stuff” that he accused Utah fans of doing? Hey, doesn’t matter. I forgive him, and I also forgive the institution that he now attends for teaching him big words like “stuff.”

But what about the “beer spilled on them?” I know, I know, it kind of makes me wonder, too, if Max Hall has his beer-tossing incidents confused. It’s entirely possible that it was a miscreant University of Arizona fan who doused Max’s mom, not a University of Utah fan. But, doubting Max at this forgiving juncture would be heresy. I think he’s correct in thinking that beer was tossed on his mama, and he’s right to be mad about it—to the point of bringing lifelong ridicule upon himself and everything he represents.

If anything, and to make life easier for his own offspring, his family should just quit wearing their beer magnets to college football games. To hear Max Hall tell it, it appears that where a member of the Hall family goes, a good beer goes to waste. If Max Hall really wants to be known for something positive, he should share the technology that makes his family members such attractive targets for beer spillers. I know lots of people who would buy one just for the free beer. It should bother no one if Max Hall got all the credit for the Miracle Beer Device.

I wouldn’t even mind if he gave the proceeds to BYU, the same way Gatorade does for the University of Florida. Coaches at every level of football (except perhaps at Florida State University) wear a Gatorade magnet. At the tail end of high-profile football games, fleeing coaches miraculously get doused with that salty liquid. Thus, I no longer think there was malice intended when those Arizona and Utah beers took flight. Beer heading toward Max Hall’s family seems as natural a consequence as iron filings rushing toward the dual-pole attraction of a horseshoe magnet.

Not that beer tossing should be condoned; it shouldn’t.

Rather, I accept it upon faith and the good life I lead that it’s indeed possible to be attracted to beer, and vice versa. It’s just a matter of which pole you’re on. Max Hall sits on the crazy pole, and I forgive him for that.