Fair enough. Majors had his warts. I suppose my question is whether people would, in retrospect, be in a hurry to send him packing or ask him to keep things going- warts and all.
I don’t remember any curtains covering up the empty seats during the Majors Era.
It’s a much different era.
I’ll take this opportunity to tell my one personal Majerus story:
I was in college and played pickup basketball in the HPER essentially every day. Good times. One day the tunnel to the Huntsman Center was open. It was dark but lights could be seen in the distance. I figured that I was not supposed to go in there but that they probably wouldn’t put me in jail for going down the tunnel so down I went.
After nervously walking for some time I realized that the tunnel ended in the Hunty and then realized that the team was practicing. I moved into the shadows and watched. These were the Byron Wilson days. That dude was a specimen and could really ball. The team was scrimmaging and Majerus was working with their offensive scheme. Byron passed when he had an open shot and Maj blew the whistle to shut everything down. He lined everyone up and asked them one at a time if he lets them shoot.
“John, do I let you shoot the ball?” Majerus said.
“No coach,” John said.
“Jimmy, do I let you shoot the ball?”
"No coach.’
“Sam, do I let you shoot?”
“No coach.”
Majerus literally asked 12 dudes one at a time whether he lets them shoot the ball. Each said no. Then he looked at Byron and screamed “see Byron, no one else is allowed to shoot. Who is going to shoot the @$#$%% @!@#@ ball if you don’t? So shoot the #%@# #@#$ ball!!”
My eyes were as big as saucers and I’m glad he didn’t know I was there. I had a huge smile on my face and decided it was time to make my way back to allowed areas before someone noticed me. I don’t remember anything else that happened that day but I doubt I’ll ever forget watching them practice and watching Maj yell at Byron. Byron was drafted by the Suns, didn’t do much in the NBA, but played professionally for 17 years.
Majerus had his warts. Many of the great coaches seem to be flawed characters. Utah basketball was a force to be reckoned with back then. Those were the days.
Utah football has been a force to be reckoned with over the past decade and I’m not in a hurry to “blow up” the coaching staff because the team sucks after losing 90% of the team to injuries and the NFL.
By the way, Whitt is all class and doesn’t have any warts. I’d put the probability of his replacement being better than him at < 2-3%. Oh and for the fire-Ludwig fools, the probability of Lud’s replacement being an improvement < 1%. Been there, done that. No thanks.
Yes the team loses a lot now.
Well, hopefully this season will continue in a positive trajectory.
And the curtains have been removed after the team started to win.
I meant that people would often bring up Majerus’s tenure and accomplishments – that was a different era.
Personally, I don’t do that because the climate and culture now are so different from that time. Glad to see the team is evolving in the right direction.
But, sadly, even though they’re winning there’s only been one game in the JMHC where the curtains should have been down. It’s still just a giant, red cavern these days. Hopefully with conference season starting that changes.
How do you have a player for two years and not get him ready to play a single series? One series…just to see how it looks after the clustered performance from the starter. Boggles the mind.
They should visit Arizona and see how to do it. They put in a true freshman that played so well, Fifita drove starter Da Laura back into the portal.
My non-football mind has never understood how Utah handles QBs. Early in our PAC-12 membership I wondered how attractive Utah would be to desirable QB or WR recruits, given our run-heavy offense and and apparent emphasis on defense. With Tyler Huntley and then Rising, and the offensive power that has developed, I thought maybe we were past that era. But the old weirdness of our approach to QBs seems to be creeping back. I know, injuries, the transfer portal, NIL, etc. I could be overreacting. But still…
I still can’t see how Utah—a team that has been a consistent top-20 program, that has back-to-back PAC-12 titles and four consecutive title-game appearances (throwing out 2020) coming into the year—can’t have a better backup QB option than Barnes. Johnson had his chance, and he proved to be a worse thrower than Barnes. Then you have Rose, who apparently wasn’t worthy of a series or two in a meaningless bowl game when Barnes stunk.
The problem goes back to Rising’s surgery. It was multiple ligament tears, not just the ACL. And his surgeon said for multiple tears it is 11-12 months.
Surgery was in January so no way was he coming back this year, no matter hos good his rehab looked.
The Utes medical staff should have read the operative report & figured that out. That is not Whit’s job. Then they could have gone to the portal & found a 1 year rental.
I know UNLV is losing right now and will almost certainly end up losing its game, but it’s pretty sad their offense looks 10 times better than Utah’s. That’s inexcusable, even with Utah’s injuries.
Yup, a very disappointing ending. Unfortunate and embarrassing.
Look, I get that Utah had a crazy number of injuries, some early departures for the draft, and other thing going on. But sorry, Utah’s backup QB and WRs should be better than UNLV’s starters. And it sure didn’t look that way on Saturday and tonight. Among other things, Whit needs to spend the offseason taking a hard look at personnel, offensive philosophy, and how players are being developed and used. Can we please get some receivers that get open and then do something after the catch?
We were often seeing players who weren’t just the backup. They were 3-4 deep on the chart and we aren’t Georgia or Ohio State. Our starters can hang with about any team in the country but we kid ourselves if we think we have the resources and draw to keep amazing 3-4th stringers sitting idle and that the next man up slogan for Utah means the same thing (especially on Offense) that it does on perennial CFP teams.
UNLV starters on offense are probably kids we’d love to have on backup in many of our O positions. They’d have been started for us last week in several spots.
I saw multiple people who know football point out we had multiple receivers open all game, but Barnes missed them time and time again.
The QB issue is an issue, but it seems Barnes struggled to actually see his WR’s
I’d like to think without the OL departures BB might have settled into a better rhythm, but that’s not what happened, he was way off, eventually visibly frustrated while being medically evaluated, waving his own finger back and forth as a concussion test.
And he still came back in. Any soldier in combat would be lucky to have Bryson Barnes in his unit. Not an Elite 11 invitee, but that guy is unbelievable.
I’m the first to mock whatever is going on in Provo, but I trust A-Rod knows what he’s doing, with 2 QBs in the league. This year they had the skilled, highly experienced P5 transfer Slovis turned into hamburger by bad OL play. Then the JC transfer with the rocket arm and impressive athleticism looked really promising… until he, too, was hot garbage.
Bryson Barnes was neither of them, but he had the heart of a warrior and belief in himself. His season went from the opening play vs UF going 70+ yards to getting demolished in Vegas.
Noah Fifita came in as a FR and looked like Mahomes in chaotic situations, sending the previously impressive Jayden DeLaura back into the portal. Rare performance.
I’m hopeful about Wilson, but it’s a tall order to ask any QB to thrive when big, fast tough guys are trying to do them harm. We reduced Williams the Heisman winner to pouting, while with better protection Nix and Penix were finalists for the Heisman, this year.
I wonder if Garcia might be a rare OL good enough to start as FR.
We need it. Rising needs it, Wilson needs it.