Episode 8 – Utah gets demolished in Wyoming and BYU dominates their bye week. The season is over for Real Salt Lake and the Jazz are just heating up.

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The Rivalry Smack took a serious blow this last weekend and we are both slightly concerned about it. However, as Zach keeps reminding me: all the rules are thrown out in rivalry week, even if one team is 11-0 going in and the other 0-11. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but probably not by much.

What happened to hurt the rivalry was Utah lost a conference game to Wyoming in Laramie. The final score was 31-15, although both of Utah’s scores came after Wyoming was up 31-0 and they coasted to a much-easier-than-the-score-looked victory. Utah’s defense played fairly well, all things considered, but the offense flat out stunk. Brett Ratliff and the boys have only scored three offensive touchdowns in the last three games, which is not going to cut it in any conference.

BYU congratulated themselves for an impressive bye week. The Cougars and their fans have decisively determined that they will win the conference without another loss and have petitioned the Commissioner to just break out the trophy now and let them advance directly to the bowl game. Okay, to be fair, BYU is looking pretty good now. They seem to have solved some of the problems with turnovers and penalties that have hurt them in the past few years. Whether that is an upward trend or just a nice blip on the radar remains to be seen. Without a doubt, they will win a lot of games if they keep playing as well as they have been.

Real Salt Lake was bumped out of any playoff contention when Colorado and Houston played to a draw on Saturday night. RSL’s own draw on Sunday became just for show. Jeff Cunningham won the Golden Boot for scoring the most goals, along with tying for the most assists. Unfortunately, because RSL failed to take advantage of opportunities at the end of the season, he will not get any serious consideration for MVP. Oh well, I guess all that’s left to do is shut off the lights and turn the keys back into the University.

We also talk about the Jazz preseason and some other fun things in the podcast, which I would hate to spoil for those who both read and listen. We appreciate everyone who has been downloading the show, and please let us know what you think about it!

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P.S. – I have the news on in the background and I just heard there may be a chocolate shortage soon – workers in the Ivory Coast are burning cocoa beans and crops to protest their low wages. It’s probably a good time to stock up – even if there’s no shortage, you don’t want to take that chance, do you?

posted by Nate and Zach @ 9:34 AM