Episode 17 – The big bowl preview show, and some stuff about the Jazz

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The College Football Bowl season is finally here, and two of the local interest teams are off to play in their third-tier bowl games. I am excited to see both Utah and BYU play one last game against decent opponents, but the rest of the bowl season doesn’t carry much interest for me. The entire NCAA D1 postseason football program is so screwed up that even the vaunted “BCS Championship Game” has only one story line in which I am genuinely interested: will Urban Meyer get his championship?

Let me clarify one thing about that: I’m actually not concerned about Urban’s hopes and dreams. I am, however, curious to see if he bolts from the Florida program after potentially accomplishing what he said he wanted to do there. Will he try his hand in the NFL? (Which would likely be a disaster – NFL players would neither be intimidated nor impressed with him.) Will he try staying with a program long enough to win with his own recruits? I would be interested to see if his system carries out over 10 years, and not just in a relative short-term situation.

I have read that fellow Utah lovers at Utefans.net sometimes refer to the former football coach at Utah as “Rban,” because “There was never really any ‘U’ in Urban.” I am not sure if I completely agree with that sentiment, although I think it’s absolute genius and mostly correct. If Urban Meyer had come to this program and lost big two years in a row rather than win big, he likely would have been fired. The argument for loyalty to a program is very one-sided and always in favor of the academic institution. Nobody would have hollered about loyalty if they were running him out of town on a rail, in other words.

Instead, Urban won big for two years in a row and landed three head coaching gigs for his staff (Kyle Wittingham and Mike Sanford, along with himself). Yes, I would have liked to see him stick around for another few years and try to match the program-building prowess of teams like Louisville or Boise State, but I can’t fault a guy for going somewhere that he would get a really, really, really big raise. I mean, for comparison, even I would be willing to give up my Utah Fan status and adopt BYU Fan status for the right price. It would cost much less how much Urban got paid to leave (hint, hint).

Okay, so I probably wouldn’t do that, but send me your bids, anyway. I can use them for future negotiations.

The Cougars will strike first bowl blood when they take the field against the terrifying Ducks of Oregon in the Pioneer PureVision Las Vegas Bowl. Brent Musberger and Craig James will be calling the game for ESPN, and kickoff is Thursday, December 21^st at 6:00 PM, Mountain Time. I called this game a “third-tier” bowl game in the first paragraph, and that was not meant to demean either the BYU program or the bowl. But it is definitely not among the top-tier (Rose, Orange, Fiesta, Sugar) or the second-tier (Gator, Cotton, Holiday), but falls into that vast sludge of unimportant, uninteresting bowls that are only watched by fans of the participating programs.

In all honesty, what will it really matter if BYU wins or loses the game? I mean, the fans always want to see a win and will be very disappointed if the Cougars don’t break their 10+ year bowl win drought, but there just isn’t much on the line. Without an all-encompassing playoff system (which isn’t about to happen anytime soon), there is nothing very significant about BYU’s postseason appearance to pique the nation’s interest. The very best thing that could come out of this is BYU wins big and the offense looks great, and then maybe John Beck gets drafted in the fourth round instead of the fifth.

It’s a different story for BYU fans, and they will have quite a few story lines to follow. The great big story is the “reuniting” of coaching buddies Bronco Mendenhall and Gary Crowton. The offensive coordinator for Oregon will try to run his balanced offense down the throat of his former team and defensive coordinator. BYU will try to respond by blowing up Oregon’s offense and “John Beck-ing” the Ducks into submission. Oregon had early success and were ranked as high as 11^th before collapsing a bit in the later part of their difficult Pac-10 schedule. On paper, this looks like a pretty evenly matched game to me, but I would give the slight edge to BYU. Their momentum from a nine-game winning streak should be thoroughly snuffed by the four week layoff between now and the emotional Utah game, but they are also probably the better team.

Utah and Tulsa’s seasons have been surprisingly parallel. Tulsa has a better overall record (8-4 as opposed to 7-5 for Utah), although both teams are 5-3 in their respective conferences. Tulsa was 7-1 (with their only loss coming against BYU) prior to a tough stretch at the end of the season where they lost three of four. The Golden Hurricane won the last game of the regular season, however, to break a three game losing streak.

The Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl will take place on Saturday, December 23^rd between the Utah Utes and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. Tulsa has a very efficient quarterback and excellent receivers which will test the vaunted Utah secondary. They pass more than they run and their total offense is ranked 20^th in the NCAA. In addition, Tulsa’s passing defense is ranked 6^th in the NCAA, which should make for an interesting evening for Brett Ratliff and the Utah offense.

I suspect the BHAF Bowl will be a close, hard-fought game, and I would be hard pressed to confidently predict a Utah win. However, Kyle Wittingham and his coaching staff always seem to get the team ready for big games, and they are riding a 5 game bowl winning streak. I will guess a win for Utah (hope for a win, at any rate), but they are likely to face a tough road to victory.

Oh, and the Jazz are still winning the majority of their games, and have been playing enjoyable basketball (in certain games) of late. I am tempted to criticize them after last night’s pitiful effort, but since their last two losses have come by a total of two points, I will give them a pass. You can hear more on that in the podcast, though. This is pretty long already and I wouldn’t want to spoil all the fun.

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posted by Nate and Zach @ 12:05 PM