I’ll admit that I am apprehensive about the Utes upcoming football season. I guess it is a combination hangover from last year combined with a general lack of interest in our BigXII conference mates. I’ll admit that games starting after 8:00 pm MT took a toll on this guy who will turn 69 in October.
On the other hand, I am very interested in seeing what Alex Jensen and staff, despite the late start, can do with the players they were able to bring in. I believe the team will play and different from any previous Utah basketball program. Like Majerus, Alex will emphasize defense but I think the defense will look more like the physical in your face defense played by Houston with defense hopefully leading to turnovers and offensive opportunities. It will be interesting to see whether Alex will follow Majerus pattern of sitting guys after they make a mistake. I didn’t really like that from Majerus because it appeared that players were always looking over their shoulder and becoming too tentative at times. Although the Utes will likely have more OOC losses than under Smith, I was happy to see a more challenging schedule with fewer tier 3 and 4 opponents.
Late night starts suck, regardless of the sport. Post sepsis it has been harder. At 62 I never thought I would fall apart like this, but here we are.
Both teams have their intrigues, and both will be more competitive than the Jazz. Jensen has his work cut out for him, but Alex has shown he can create great players at the pro level (and those guys don’t listen to coaching much), so he will have success here.
I just hope he bitches about having to play midnight basketball as much as Rick did.
I’m still having a tough time getting excited about Big XII football opponents. The loss of the regionality of the sport bothers me. We’ll be missing a home game this year, only the fifth my wife has missed since 1985, and don’t feel too bad about it. Last year’s disappointing performance is also still a hangover for me. I’m hoping the excitement will come back.
For basketball I can safely say the only reason I renewed my seats was because of hope in Alex making decent again. Almost three decades of mediocrity, we can count good years one hand since 1998, has been a chore. Whether or not I hang in there much more remains to be seen.
This is the first time in several seasons that I have a genuine interest in the MBB team. Like most have stated here, my football interest isn’t as high, QB roulette had something to do with it, the loss of the PAC12 another part of it. At least Big XII BB is pretty damned good, I hope AJ can make the team competitive.
I’m optimistic FB will bounce back from last year’s debacle, not going to predict how big of a bounce. FB is just too hard to precisely predict. Just enjoy the ride.
It was awesome traveling to games in the PAC, no interest in going to a lot of the cities in the B12, except the AZ schools and CU.
Hoops - I’m very much looking forward to the AJ era. I wonder if his teams will be like Majerus’ teams - slow start but by February looking like a pretty good team. It will be fun to watch it unfold.
Conferences across the country are way too big. With PAC12 we played teams in our division every single year, the teams from states of Washington/Oregon 6 out of 8, and we did alternate between Cal and Stanford (so California teams could always play every single year). Built some exciting rivalries with teams we saw every year (LA schools, Buffs, Zona, ASU) or most years (Ducks and Huskies).
Now we play many teams just every other year and can go 3-4 years between visits from some of them. Don’t really build good rivalries that way. But likely all will change again in a few years.
I wish they would schools/conferences would split off football and return the other sports to regional conferences. Will never happen, but I think it would save money and wear and tear on those teams that compete 20-30 times per season.
