[JGore]

So here’s the only question that matters in my mind at this point:

Are the Utes now better off at WR with the additions of Merriweather and Simmons than they’d be if Z. Williams would have stayed?

[JGore]

In the spirit of helping the OP feel good about the upcoming football season, here’s 1 nugget:

Wayshawn Parker is a LEGIT P4 running back, Dampier is a 1,000 yard rushing QB and they’ll be running behind what many college football media members consider to be a top 5 offensive line unit.

You say you’re worried about the defense, well show me the last time a Utah team could control the LOS with an above average O-line and K-Whitt/Scalley couldn’t figure it out defensively.

[JGore]

I’ll have to try and catch an episode of the show mentioned by the OP but as far as the link provided: I’m not gonna make any assumptions about an 18 year old kid, his mental makeup, coachability, and emotional maturity based off 30 seconds of condensed video clips.

[JGore]

No offense Miami Ute, but I see ZERO validity in that line of thinking.

First and foremost, I’m not too concerned about the past when it comes to getting as many bites at the apple when it comes to 4-5 star WR’s coming to Utah.

Unfortunately for Singer, his 1 and only season at Utah coincided with one of the most bizarre and disjointed years at the QB position in program history.

Not to mention that Utah now has Jason Beck at OC, Devon Dampier at QB and an entirely new offensive system. Landing this kid could potentially be huge. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed!!

[JGore]

It’s nice to see out of state programs seeing TDS for what they really are.

It was hilarious to watch the BYU-B12 love fest when they first arrived in the conference. Anyone who knows how BYU rolls knew that it would only be a matter of time before it blew up in everyone’s face. The NIL era is only gonna make it worse for them considering that they unsurprisingly have ZERO idea on how to handle it. You’ve got high level donors going on record saying TDS bball will “NEVER” be outbid on a prospect while at the same time a high ranking LDS Church & BYU official goes on a morality rant via social media touting BYU’s integrity and claims they’ll “never” be the highest bidder on ANY prospect.

Provo will NEVER be able to navigate the NIL era successfully because not only do they not possess the savvy necessary, they’re constantly at cross purposes with themselves. The rich alumni can’t help themselves, they have to tell the world that they’re funneling million$ into NIL and pound their chests that they won’t be outbid for players. Meanwhile, the church can’t let people think that, so they’ll continue to push the moral superiority agenda while claiming that the BYU experience- and not money is what’s luring all these athletes to Provo. And at the EXACT same time those 2 completely different narratives are being pushed, TDS will be busy tampering with opposing players while also using money and religious blackmail to illegally recruit athletes on missions who didn’t choose Provo the first time,

On top of all that, being an independent for 11 years allowed people to forget about just how high maintenance TDS is as a conference member. Ask MWC officials who were so sick of dealing with Provo by the time they left their conference, that NOBODY was sad to see them go even though it came on the heels of losing Utah and TCU to power conferences. Hell, MWC officials couldn’t get Provo out and Boise State in fast enough.

[JGore]

I had to chuckle when I read the title of this thread. The Utes have been without a basketball coach for 120 hours and we have people wondering what’s taking so long?!

Seems like there’s quite a bit of handwringing going on over this and that shouldn’t be the case. This is one of those situations in which looking at the specifics will tell you EXACTLY what’s going on.

For instance:

– Harlan doesn’t fire Smith with a couple weeks left in the season and $5 million still being owed to Craig without being told to do so directly from people above his pay grade.

– There is quite literally a 0% chance that the same people who green lit the Smith firing and ensuing $5 million buy out were going to set these events into motion just so they could kickoff a new coaching search with the hopes that they’d eventually land on someone who was a clear upgrade from Smith.

– More proof of this is the fact that Smith actually overachieved this season. The B12 is considered to be the best bball conference in the nation and the Utes were pretty much universally picked to finish last heading into year 1. If the athletic department and our boosters didn’t have a candidate in the wings that they were excited enough about to straight up eat $5 million bucks, it would have been REALLY easy to sell everyone on this season being a step in the right direction, blah, blah, blah.

– There’s a coach in place. That coach is a former Ute that will immediately inject excitement and hope into a bball program that has been flat lining. The timing of Smith’s firing was due to the fact that there’s a few players on this squad that can hopefully be retained. Now the new coach has some runway to assess players and talk with them before they can jump into the portal. All of these factors result in there being no reason for Utah to rush an announcement of the new coach just to appease the fanbase. They’ll let the season play until it’s natural end and shortly after we’re eliminated from the conference tourney, the other shoe will drop, and what a beautiful shoe it will be!!

[JGore]

While I’m certainly not happy about losing Tanuvasa to Provo Community College, I do like that Utah’s not buying into the idea that they have to win the headline war over TDS in December. I’m just fine with them winning offseason championships- in fact, their fanbase seems to thrive on it.

I’m sure for the # TDS threw at Tanuvasa, Utah can go and get 2 slightly less talented/hungrier and healthier prospects to play in the DT rotation and as the OP mentioned, we’ve already got some promising underclassmen that have shown they can play near or above his level. So why hamstring the NIL budget just to keep him outta Provo? Tanuvasa played a full season in ‘23 but in ‘22 & ‘24 he only managed 11 total games. Hopefully TDS just overpaid for a guy that’s gonna play in half their games.

Again, while it sucks to lose a contributor to that school, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Whitt is content to let them overpay for guys that he feels are replaceable. And my last 2 cents- I think it’s pretty pathetic that TDS’s offseason plan seemed to revolve around poaching Utah’s talent. Calhoun listed them as the first team to make him an offer and they spent the ENTIRE portal window tampering with Snowden, trying everything they could to pry him from Utah. They also obviously spent some time illegally contacting Clegg while he was on his mission. Kids don’t just come home and flip in 48-72 hours after being gone for 24 months. I count keeping Snowden as the biggest victory of the offseason as it certainly sounds like he was TDS’ “Plan A” for the offseason.

[JGore]

Normally I don’t get too up in arms over these things, but there’s some issues that make this Clegg flip-flop pretty infuriating.

When Provo loses prominent LDS recruits to Utah, their fans have the flippant attitude of “Oh well, we’ll just continue to recruit him while he’s on his mission”, and while they can’t come out and say it, Provo’s coaches feel the same damn way. Recruiting wise, these kids are legally off limits when they’re away on their missions but BYU takes full advantage of the church sending these kids away- most often to a far away country where they’re isolated from anything and everything outside of the LDS church.

Clegg literally returned home from his mission a few days ago. There is a ZERO% chance that this kid was completely left alone for 24 months, only to see YBU make contact with him, resume the recruitment process, and manage to flip him all within the 72 or so hours he’d been home from his mission. The fact of the matter is, for the last 2 years there was a concerted effort by members of the Provo football program as well as LDS church officials with marching orders to sway Clegg towards YBU.

This exact scenario will continue to play out anytime Provo loses out on a big time mormon recruit, Provo officials will continue to lie about it, and they’ll continue to get away with it because they control the entire narrative while these kids are away from home and 100% under their control.

This just serves as yet more evidence that ethics and legality mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to TDS when they know there’s no chance at all of being caught. They just make it so damn easy to hate them.

[JGore]

Squatch,

I agree that it’s been a great run for BYU recently, but that’s about all I can agree with. I honestly don’t know anybody personally that actually thinks making up stuff about BYU will lead the church to freak out and shut it down. That’s some next level, tinfoil hat stuff right there if there’s folks out there that really believe that’s a thing.

As far as the basketball player from Baylor is concerned, it’s not Ute fans or Baylor fans pushing a false agenda due to sour grapes. There’s media members reporting that prior to entering the portal, this young man had already signed a $1 million NIL deal to return to Baylor for next season before being contacted by BYU and being told that they’d pay him $3 million if he walked away from his deal with Baylor and jumped to BYU. NIL deals are non binding so the kid gladly took the extra $2 million to come to Provo.

I understand that alot of schools are doing exactly what BYU is doing, but as is almost always the case, BYU does it while actively denying that’s how they operate and is all too quick to act persecuted and outraged when they’re outed. It’s an old and tired act and they deserve to be called out for it.

[Author]

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