18 seconds of video is all it took for some viewers to be outraged by University of Utah athletes. The short video depicts athletes in a school facility preforming a mock baptism. The video was originally posted to Instagram on the account of Utah’s running back, Lucky Radley.
The video was removed from Instagram, but was republished Sept. 17, on YouTube.
Kyle Whittingham issued the following statement about the video:
“We have addressed this issue with our players, and although it was poor judgement on their part, there was absolutely no malice or disrespect intended towards any particular religion or rite.”
Utah’s tight end, Jake Murphy recently tweeted the following about the video:
“To all of the Utah/BYU LDS/non-LDS fans who saw this Utah video. First of all, was posted two months ago. Not this week. And it was not … not intended to offend any religion. It was a dare to see if the player would go all the way under the water in the ice tub. …2 of the 3 people in the video were baptized by immersion and one was actually LDS. For any LDS member to be offended by this is a reach.”