Cracks me up seeing all the BYU fans cheering tonight online. I’m glad the Utes were able to give them something to cheer about.
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Cracks me up seeing all the BYU fans cheering tonight online. I’m glad the Utes were able to give them something to cheer about.
I feel sorry for the players more than anything. I don't live and die by the wins and losses anymore. I was more nervous before this game than normal and the loss sucks, but you can imagine how the players feel. They are just young kids and football is everything to them.
What an awesome video of two brothers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvl0...ature=youtu.be
A Utah vs. Alabama 2008 redo would be a great bowl matchup.
Well, I think at this point it looks like the Utes may be bound for the Alamo Bowl, which pits the second choice team from the Pac12 against the second choice team from the Big12.
Presumably the second choice teams from those two conferences are Utah and Baylor. And if that's true it would kind of suck for Utah since Baylor would practically have home field advantage.
11-2 Utah Football is headed to the Alamo Bowl to take on 7-5 Texas Football. The Utes are 0-1 against the Longhorns.
What do you think of the matchup?
YUP^^^^^
Utah got the shaft big time.
Yea--no real bowl schedule allows an SEC vs. PAC 12
Just saying it would have been nice.
Bama gets Michigan
How do you figure? Utah got exactly what they deserved.... the number 2 team available in the PAC goes to the Alamo Bowl and plays the number 2 available team from the BIG 12. Every team in the PAC and Big 12 knew that before the season began, it's pretty much written in stone.
Climb-Utah.com
Practically a home game for Texas.
Win big or go home - Or in Utah's case go to the Alamo Bowl.
Utah's inability to win in crucial situations continues to plague them.
I agree that Texas is a shitty opponent, but as I noted the 2nd best available Big 12 team is guaranteed a spot in the Alamo Bowl. Is what sucks is the Big 12 is such a weak conference.
If Utah had of played a close game against Oregon they might have received an invitation to the Cotton Bowl who has the rights to select a top 12 at large team, but they took #10 Penn State over #12 Utah and who can blame them.
The only good I can see about the Alamo Bowl is Utah recruits Texas pretty heavy and a beat down of Texas would help that.
Climb-Utah.com
So....what went wrong?
How is it possible that an Oregon team that struggled to get wins against teams that Utah routinely crushed during the regular season able to completely dismantle the Utes? I'm trying to wrap my brain around how the wheels could have come off so readily and so completely. I'm curious to get @Iceaxe 's take on what went wrong. In my mind it was one or more of the following:
1. Utah was overrated and was exposed. (A theory that I don't buy. Anyone who claims that either hasn't been paying attention or is a BYU fan, or both).
2. Whittingham was blatantly outcoached. (I think there's truth to this since Utah's Special Teams looked anything but special, and nothing seemed to be working).
3. The entire team "just had a bad night." (I don't buy this).
4. The entire team + coaching staff underestimated Oregon. (Plausible).
5. The coaching staff didn't get the team ready. (Also plausible).
How else could this epic choke be explained?
I see this all the time from little league to pro... Utah had an eye who they were going to play in the four team playoffs and forgot to show up. As a coach it's impossible to predict when this will happen, it just does. And if you ever figure out a way to predict this you'll be a billionaire. I think the same thing happened to Oregon against AZ State. Bottomline the team wasn't prepared, who exactly you want to assign the blame to is up to you. But I always told my teams we share the win equally and we share the defeat equally.
I spent 5 years of my adult life making a living as a professional athlete, and the one thing I always tell people is the difference between 1st and last is a knife edge at a world class level and most people are clueless how fine that line really is. The difference between 10-2 and 2-10 is much narrower then Joe Sixpack realizes.
Or maybe to put it in simple terms, that's why we play the game.
You can always look on the bright side, this is also how Utah kicked the shit out of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl ;-)
Climb-Utah.com
You forgot team speed.
Actually, momentum, grit, confidence, focus.... in other words sports psychology, could also be a factor, if not THE factor. It is interesting, in basketball, sometimes it takes one player to hit a three pointer and then everyone else starts making baskets. In football, it sometimes takes one play. It seemed that the Utes just couldn't get it going mentally and played tight and even with panic. Oregon on the other hand, played lose, with their hair on fire, and came out of the shoot ready to punch someone in the mouth.
Yeah -- to go along with that, my 14 yr old made a comment about the Ute players when they were coming out of the concourse onto the field.
"They look scared."
When I looked closer I saw he was right. Huntley didn't look like he was having a good time -- he had a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eye that I had never seen before.