Time to focus on what’s important. Football. And next year is the biggest event in football. The world championships!!
Boom. http://www.americanfootballinternational.com/australia-wins-bid-to-host-2019-ifaf-mens-world-championship/
This is a serious thing? I’m a pretty big football fan… Never heard of it. They say amateur level. Does anyone know who we have representing us when this comes up? Anyone with honest NFL potential isn’t risking injury for this thing, so D2 level kids? Or all the guys who couldn’t make the NFL or even scout teams?
Usually guys that couldnt make it in the NFL. It is not good football, but it is football.
Barton should be very solid. The whole line should take a step forward organically, and with the addition with Beeno. https://247sports.com/college/utah
but now he needs to add some nastiness
This has been my concern from the moment he set foot on RES turf. I think this is something you either have or don’t have. I’ve never seen “nasty” out of him … ever. But, Cody has turned things around, maybe Jackson can too. I’d love to confuse him with John Cullen or Garett Bolles this year.
Only TEN things Utah needs to do to win the South
Redzone protection and third down efficiency. These are the things I covet for the offense.
Number 10 Do people want to see the return of “Riverboat” Kyle?? I still look back at the Cal game. I don’t regret the failed fourth down attempts. Mostly the time out gaffe by the refs. Not hurrying to the line of scrimmage after the first stop and also not letting Shyne run it in. Moss was awesome that game but wasn’t ready in that moment.
I love Riverboat Kyle. The Cal game was on the refs and Moss making a freshman mistake. The call to go for it against USC was the right call in my opinion as well. And while I didn’t agree with it at the time, looking back at the UW game, I think he made the correct decision there as well.
I think Whitt does a very good job of assessing game situations and makes gutsy calls when it’s well calculated. He doesn’t just do it willy-nilly. Plus, with our returning O-Line, Moss and Shyne, there should be no reason that we can’t get 1 yard whenever we need it.
Riverboat Kyle had the balls to keep going for it on 4th down that year against SC, and to go for the fake punt last year against UW. I hope we see more of him.
Riverboat Kyle stresses me out. I’m more of an Angry Kyle kind of guy.
Damn. I was 100% sold on riverboat Kyle, but angry Kyle? Ask Wyoming how they feel about angry Kyle. And BYU. They ain’t won since angry Kyle showed up.
Preach! We need more of Angry Kyle.
So good when he gets the eyebrow twitch going. I do love Angry Kyle.
You fellow Ute fans won’t like this, but we really only need to improve in two of those 10 categories to win the south… 1 would most likely be sufficient if we stay the same in every other area.
If we cut down turnovers, and bump up the TD% we will win the south going away. We don’t need more sacks. We don’t need more takeaways. We don’t need better receiving production… We don’t NEED any of that stuff (though I suppose some of it will need to happen in order for the two I mentioned to happen as well.)
They are all intertwined. Huntley’s health will be tied to the offensive line cohesion. If the defense gets turnovers and sacks creating short fields Utah will have more opportunities to score with higher percentages. Etc etc.
if all 10 of those things happen. Forget winning the south, we’ll be contending for a National Championship.
I love this. I’ve listened to it so many times. It’s great.
Honestly, I was STUNNED to hear Monson talk about Utah the way he did in my link below. The tides are changing.
Q: How has the transition been being back as a Division I athlete after being gone for two years?
A: It’s been a process and I’ve had to be patient. Some days I feel like I run a 4.4 40-yard dash, others I feel like I run a 6.2. But I feel back up to 100-percent now.
Really great to have this back on the team.
I would like to see Covey use his redshirt year. No way he’s back to 100% by this season, especially in regards to durability. My fear is he’ll be injured and out for the season 4 games into the season, not get to use the redshirt, and will be a junior coming off an injury in 2019 instead of a healthy redshirt freshman in 2019.
Well, if he gets injured and is out for the season after just 4 games, he will still be able to redshirt.
Redshirt sophomore, I would think. I would assume we would want to use the talent now. There is always a risk of injury.
I think it would be better to use his talents this season and next. We are so close to winning the south. He is another weapon in our arsenal, and one we will need with the schedule we have.
No way he is smart. He is going to be smart about his touches and his hits.
He was already a really mature Freshman I think he will be just fine. Injuries can inexplicably happen sitting out for a year is just as likely of causing one as playing now.
Thanks for posting this link.
Not sure why people are giving Arizona so much credit. Gonna be a retooling year. Just wish Utah had USC’s Pac-12 North schedule. Gotta beat the dawgs in September!!
I hope it will be this way as well, but Arizona always seems to have our number, I think that’s why everyone is concerned about them.
I think people are giving Arizona credit for three reasons:
1 – For some reason everyone thinks Sumlin is a big upgrade of RichRod. RichRod has his issues, but he was an offensive genious. He took a RB (Tate) and turned him into a servicable QB. I don’t think Sumlin is a big of an upgrade as people are saying.
2 – Their conference schedule is ridiculously easy. They should go 2-1 or 3-0 OOC. They play at OSU, which is great, they get Cal at home, which is great because Cal could be tough enough to beat you in California, but easy enough to beat at your house. They don’t play Stanford or Washington and they get Oregon at home. Outside of the Utah and USC games, Arizona could go 7-0 and it wouldn’t be surprising.
3 – The Tate hype has reached full steam. Now, don’t get me wrong. As a running QB, he is amazing. Like, unreal. Maybe Tebow level (and in my mind Tebow was arguably the best COLLEGE QB to ever play the game). BUT, the dude can’t pass and I think a lot of people are forgetting that. He is a RB playing QB. And RichRod was amazing at getting Tate into situations where he could make the easy dump off pass or chuck it deep. Tate is Taysom Hill, only much, much better.
great stuff from a non-local media outlet.
god forbid we have anything remotely like this (or Wilner from SJ Mercury News) from within the state.
but we can get 30 articles a year about a 6 foot Mormon white boy playing in Asia.
I’m Mormon, but I just don’t get it.
I think it is changing. Just yesterday, Gordon Monson was on the radio saying that Utah has surpassed BYU, was singing the praises of Hill and Young keeping everything hidden about the PAC-12 because if they did not, the BYU legislatures would prevent Utah from going to the PAC-12, and how ridiculous that is.
It will change. It is changing. Dan Sorenson went off on this on a podcast the other day.
Everyone else will come around. I don’t think BYU fans will become Utah fans, but I do think that BYU fans will just die off/fade away.
In 20 years, Utah will be the clear #1 and will have all these stories as everything evens out.
Here is the link of Monson praising Hill and Young and then the second segment is about why people think Mormons are so weird and how it has hurt Utah and the Jazz and Gobert’s thoughts on that in an interview with Zach Lowe. I think Gobert said the perception of Utah is that it is a s**tty city. Interestingly enough, two very relevant conversations to this board in one 25 min segment. Rudy/Zach Lowe starts at 16 mins in. Rudy says that Utah has never gotten a big free agent and Lowe agrees and says that the reputation that SLC is a “s**tty” place starts at 23:30.
It’s that damn Mormon Culture. Heaven forbid we talk about the University of Utah or watch a rated R movie. People don’t think of Baptists when they think of Alabama (well, not only), or Puritans when Massachusetts is mentioned, but Utah will always be the place with the Mormons because of that culture. I don’t mean to say there shouldn’t be one, but it shouldn’t be this Pleasantvillesque sort of thing. People need to reign that in.
It is what it is. And it’s not people being mean to Mormons. It’s the other way around. From the start and Joseph Smith’s multiple wives including marrying other men’s wifes. Then Joseph Smith builds an army and Sidney Rigdon says Mormons will exterminate all gentiles in Missouri which leads to Boggs running them out of the state. Then rumors of blood atonement and the mountain meadows massacre. All the stories of the Danites, attempted genocide of native Americans, castrating young men and so on. Then onto the priesthood/temple ban on people with african descent. And now with all the anti-LGBT+ garbage, high depression rates and youth suicides.
The LDS have very deliberately taken stances on issues that have been wrong and have treated people horribly because of it. That is going to segregate yourself from mainstream society when you do that. It’s going to lead to black athletes being very wary of the state. It’s going to lead to opinions of it being a s**tty city.
You reap what you sow.
I shouldn’t have said anything, my comment belongs on utefans.net. As for what I am sowing, it’s a strong red Kool-Aid, which will reap a Pac-12 Championship.
There are two ways to go about doing this; first would be to rank them by skill/level of competence. IE, In a vacuum, which coach is more experienced/wanted. For example, in this way, Scalley is a better coach than Shah. OR, you can rank them by importance to the University of Utah. In this case, Shah is much more important than Scalley. As much as we love Scalley, if we lost him today, we’d be fine. Gary would hop in as DC and at worst, our defense would stay the same.
I’m going to rank them by who is most important to the University of Utah.
Tier 1:
1 – Gary Andersen – He is number one. He is arguably the best recruiter on staff (with Shah and Fred Whittingham and Harding). He has been a very successful head coach at Utah State and Wisconsin, he was an amazing DC. We could lose a lot of coaches and he could easily slip into their seat and keep this truck rolling, including Whittingham.
2 – Sharrieff Shah – What he has done for our recruiting is stunning. What he has done for our CB’s is even more stunning. I’d put him as the second most important assistant coach we have. He has built up recruiting relationships that are priceless. We are lucky to have him.
3 – Jim Harding – He is the offensive Shah. His recruiting ability, including landing Bolles, our highest ranked recruit ever, his consistency in putting players into the NFL, the job he has done with our OL and the week in, week out improvement we have with our OL, the most important position in football…when we lose Harding, we will lose a lot.
Tier 2:
1 – Scalley – I would have had him Tier 1 before getting Andersen. Now that we have Andersen, Scalley, as great of a coach as he is, is less important. In fact, I’ve said over and over that getting Andersen has hurt Scalley in that he will need to leave Utah and be a successful HC somewhere else before he is HC at Utah. I have a very strong feeling that at the end of the season he will be a HC somewhere else…and that Provo will be desperate for him to be theirs…hopefully he is smarter than that.
2 – Troy Taylor – I want so badly for him to move up. There was flashes last year that he will move up. BUT, right now, with how many OC’s we’ve had…He is in the second tier. And that is ok. Because he did an ok job last year. We did see improvement as the year went on. And I think we see a big jump this fall and he moves up.
3 – Guy Holliday – Recruiting, recruiting, recruiting. And he does it and does it well. And, he coaches a position that gets better and better every year. Holliday not being retained by BYU was about as dumb a move as anyone could have made. For being led by Jesus, that school sure doesn’t seem to have any clue to what they are doing down there.
Tier 2a:
1 – Fred Whittingham – He can recruit the hell out of anyone. Tuttle anyone?
2 – Lewis Powell – Same. AND, I’m being generous with Powell at this level. He should probably be a level lower. BUT, with his recruiting ability and Gary teaching him the ropes, he will be here in no time. Lewis Powell is Sharrieff Shah during his first couple of years. Everyone is complaining about him, he’s a Whitt guy, he hasn’t landed a big time recruit, blah, blah, blah. In two years, just like Shah, he will be a lot more valuable.
Tier 3:
1 – Kiel McDonald – If Moss is drafted in the first three rounds and we get a couple big time RB’s, he jumps up.
2 – Justin Ena – Uh….I like him.
Recruiting is a team effort. Fred Whitt was the lead recruiter, but Troy Taylor is 90% of the reason Jack Tuttle came here.
Nope. Tuttle committed when ARod was here. Hiring Taylor helped keep Tuttle here, but Taylor was far from 90% of the reason.
Fred and ARod got Tuttle here. Fred kept Tuttle here. Taylor was the icing on the cake.
He verbally committed when A-Rod was around, but didn’t really sign until Dec 20, 2017. In between he had a ton of big-name schools calling him. I just can’t see him turning down Bama, USC, Wisconsin, etc, if A-Rod was still here. I like A-Rod a lot and he was a very good recruiter, but a Top 10 QB doesn’t come here to run an A-Rod offense.
Assuming BYU is looking for a new coach after this season, I doubt they look very seriously at Scalley. Nothing against Scalley, but I think having been burned by Utah D-Coordinators twice(Whit turning them down, and Sitaki not meeting expectations) will leave them looking elsewhere for a more experienced head coach. I could see them going after Jay Hill.
I could see them doing that. Their pool is so small. The real question is, why would Scalley or Hill take that job?
I bet Fresno State opens up after this year and Tedford gets a promotion. If I was Scalley, I’d be aiming for that job right now. Same recruiting footprint, good football school, easy to succeed at.
Go there, win 10+ for 3-5 years, come back when Whitt retires. That would be a dream come true.
That being said, if BYU went back to a conference, it becomes a great job again. Easy schedule, good access to recruits, waaay more money than their conference mates.
I think Jay Hill is a much better HC pick than Scalley, simply because he has a lot of HC experience now. And I hope Sitake gets at least 2 more years to work out. The byu-P owes it to him, considering how they hamstrung him by picking his coordinators for him.
I am a big fan of Scalley and he is closely tied to my family. But he really needs several years of HC experience before I want to see him Back as our HC. The Fresno State job would be amazing for him.
There’s a few reasons both of them might take the BYU job. 1) They would be a D1 FBS head coach, 2) They could stay in Utah, 3) It would be a big pay raise for either of them.
I get that it doesn’t seem like a very attractive job, and is a bit of a no-win situation right now, but it’s not as if they failed to win at BYU it would be the end of their coaching careers.
I don’t see Scalley ever taking the HC job at Brigham. Besides everybody knows Andy Reid is their next HC…
Morgan doesn’t take the BYU job…Just not in him to do so. You won’t find a guy besides a few here that is more of a Utah guy than he is. UTE!!
He’ll have other options if he chooses but comes from a great successful family and has carved out a very good living on his own coaching. The lure of the money is probably secondary to a head job so he’ll look for the right situation and it’s not taking over for a fired friend in Sitake IMO.
Jay Hill has kind of removed himself from being a “Utah guy” by going to Weber so would be a more likely fit. That said, I don’t think TDS could risk a second former Ute coach back to back with their fan base. Holmoe wouldn’t survive if they struggled early. Not that they have any options but I think they’d go straight to their new annointed hero in Grimes. That’s of course before he has coached a game.
If BYU wins only five or six games, I expect BYU will let Sitake go, and he will be taking a year off, before landing as an assistant, somewhere else. Utah’s defense maybe just that good, and a defensive coach or two may take promotions elsewhere. Who knows, maybe Kalani comes back to Utah. Does anybody else think that Anderson and Sitake my be a good combination when Wittingham retires? Not so sure myself, just interesting, how circular, coaching is in Utah.
I’m guessing Kyle coaches for another 5 years. At that point Gary will be 59 years old. Our next head coach will not be someone in the twilight of their career.
Man, five years is a lifetime. I could see Gary being our coach. Utah wins the PAC-12 and rides off into the sunset. Scalley is somewhere else. Gary is our DC and we have a lot of kids returning. I could easily see Andersen as the HC for 5 years to keep it going until Scalley or someone else proves their worth
Pretty much what we expected, except there is no return game to Missouri.
Quite possibly the strongest nonconference schedule I have seen since…well maybe ever. There has sometimes been a really good team sprinkled in from year to year, but this seems improved at the top and bottom.
What happened to Missouri? Did we buy out the return game or perhaps postpone it to another year? But indeed it is the most attractive and strongest pre-season schedule we’ve had in a very long time.
Per Andy Hill on the radio yesterday, they postponed it a year, at our request.
Day late but you get a thumbs up because I like the article that much.
Chris Hill:
We worked everything out but the money and they said, “When can you start?” Colorado was going to have to wait a year but we said, “We’ll start now.” They said, “You won’t get any money.” And we said, “We don’t care.” We wanted to get it done before any kind of political pressure hit us – anybody in the state trying to say we couldn’t do it.
Larry Scott:
Because they had their own stakeholders to deal with: boards of trustees, regents, politicians, donors, that a lot of public speculation would not be helpful and could derail things. So the more quiet, the better from the university side.
Michael Young:
So, we worked out this deal very quickly, where we would get a half share, then a three quarter share, then a full share, which really was respectful of the equity they’d built in the brand but also our limitation of not wanting either politically or financially to make a buy in to a big conference.
Those three quotes from those three men are shocking. It is sad that they had to do everything under the cover of darkness due to fear of politicians blocking a public university from bettering itself. That is why we play BYU every year.
I work for the U and I can tell you that this is still a huge problem and it affects even more than the athletic department. My department was audited by the state last year (first time ever). They had no findings. Zero. So guess what? We’re getting audited again this year! Cost to the taxpayer for each audit? $350,000. And all driven by a congressional committee made up 100% by BYU-P grads. They are truly a millstone around our necks.
Guess I’d better get back to work before the audit shows I collected pay while spending 15 minutes on UteHump.
Yup. The loyalties are with the temple oaths and not their political oaths. It’s pathetic. Not weird at all. Those people threatened to take away funding to the hospital if we didn’t play BYU.
They literally decided that the lives of Utahns weren’t as important as playing BYU. It’s a joke.
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