Well said !
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Everyone would benefit from ignoring pre-season rankings. The purpose is merely to sell media- it has no actual representation in reality. The fans have no idea what the team will look like until they it play.
Expectations can crush contentment or cause a lot of gratification. Exceed them and people are happy. Fall short of them and people are miserable.
How many times have you gone to see a movie that you were not expecting to be good and ended up enjoying it? How about when you watched movies that were touted as being the greatest only to feel like it was a bit underwhelming.
Keep your expectations modest and you will be the happier for it. This approach will not generate a lot of pre-season media consumption and is easier said than done!
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Agreed about preseason rankings for so very very many reasons. They skew and manipulate not just expectations but also the rest of the years polls. They set kids up for failure. They are a Pox on the sport.
That being said this year is all about testing and development for me now. The only game I have a a real concern about the outcome is in the BYU game just because nothing sucks more than losing to them. And even that this year 
These coaching changes honestly can’t hurt is much at this point unless it’s the case we have no plan for next year.
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With all of the crazy money swirling around like a blizzard these days, it’s easy to forget these are just kids playing a game; and we don’t know what the end of the game results will be on any given Saturday.
@Ma-ake is correct teams are complex organisms and chemistry plays a big role in success. This team on paper appears to have the necessary players to be better than it is, but isn’t. Now the HC is blowing up things to see if it can be “fixed.” My experience is this rarely works, and usually works worse in mid season than it does at the end of a season. Given the way things have played out so far this season, I would venture a guess there is a “Yoko” in the locker room - a player who’s toxic personality traits and habits are infecting other players attitudes. It happens.
That stated, this isn’t the game we are used to watching anymore. It’s turned into the NmFL - National Minor Football League. It’s no longer college kids playing a game. It’s young professional players playing developmental football - the same as Minor League Baseball or Minor League Hockey. The only difference is this one is playing on a college campus and wears the face of “college sport.” Was it ever really College Sport? Probably not, but they did a damn good job of marketing and “selling” it as such.
I hate how this whole thing is devolving.
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Two things on this.
- A quote I like very much that I posted on the Favorite Quotes thread a few months ago… The gap between expectation and reality is disappointment.
- The fine folks of Finland have been the “winners” of the happiest people survey for several years in a row. The reason cited is that the Finns can be a pessimistic bunch so when things are not as bad as seemed, they are happier. They are the world’s happiest because they have low expectations.
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There is some real wisdom in that.
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Everything is amazing, nobody’s happy
You’re sitting in a chair… IN THE SKY ! !
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Here’s a line I use with people – If everyone looks like Brad Pitt, then no one is Brad Pitt. Manage your expectations. Haha
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Hey, I have to work damned hard to be this ugly. 
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Random side note.
There’s several people where I can fully separate the art from the artist and still enjoy what they do.
Louis CK is definitely not one of those people. Just an absolute garbage human being.
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Fair enough. I know he was waaaay wrong on some things, but that’s as much as I know.
Speaking of the art vs the artist, I always like the Stones’ Brown Sugar - nice riff, catchy.
Paying attention to the lyrics earlier this year, yikes!.. if they don’t play that song anymore, totally understandable. That was pretty bad.
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This is why I never drink the preseason Kool-Aid. This season we all thought the Utes might have a special season–Rising and Kuithe coming back, good WRs, many returning to our annually strong defense, stable coaching staff, and so on. We kept hearing the o-line would be good. So like many, I was looking forward to the season. The football pundits saw it the same way. So we all wonder, what happened?
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There are a bunch of songs like that, which over the years I’ve enjoyed the tune, only to eventually discover the lyrics. Yikes!
Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” is another example.
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With regard to o-line, I think Whit says pretty much the same every year.
My favorite Billy Joel song.
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I agree 100%. I’m at the point where I want the teams moved off the college campus and divorced entirely from the connection to college students and academics.
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He was a constant sex pest to multiple women.
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Yes this is true, pre-season has little if anything to do with the season. Just because a person says something does not make it so.
That said, I don’t really care what we were ranked pre-season, what I care about is losing three games, having an offense that consistently struggles in the red zone, in fact consistently struggles!
I personally don’t think it’s the players. We have seen some really good things from the offense. We just need to figure out how to finish these red zone drives!
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We were told Cam’s a great leader. He’s been it before. After an extra year to heal up, he looked solid scrambling vs SUU. Things were looking up.
Singer is WR1, he’s been as advertized, IMO. Not a game breaking athlete, but really good, ferocious, great catches, takes the ball away on contested throws. Money has been about the same. There’s a whole bunch of guys who haven’t impressed, or haven’t even seen the field, eg Damien Alford, Landen King, Munir McClain, etc.
Can’t ask any more from Micah Bernard at RB.
The wheels flew off the wagon in Game 2 with one incredibly ill-advised play. Chaos and confusion ensued.
When opposing defenses sense the QB gameplan is limited, it’s much easier for them to cover a smaller number of routes, which allows the safeties and LBs to crowd the LOS, the DL gains an advantage, every play has much lower upside, it snowballs.
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I have been wondering what happened to him. He saw a lot of action last year, and then, nothing.
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