sigh, so much for hoping for a respite and a distraction from 2020.
All of us…We want a football season…
COVID…hold my beer…
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I’ve been streaming old Utah games every week to give folks something to scratch their football itch.
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I know. I, like everyone else, am ready for some live games. Watching other teams just isn’t the same. As much as I like aTm, they’re not my Utes.
I can’t even really get excited about the NFL this year.
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There should be an asterisk placed next to all sports results, and particularly so-called championships, for 2020. It’s a joke that sports are even happening during a global pandemic.
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I honestly don’t understand how anybody can be excited about this season. Even if your team wins it all it’s going to be heavily asterisked. It’s an escape I suppose, but the feeling is similar to a season where the pros strike and we’re left watching scabs play a watered down game.
And just wait until we get to the final weeks, and national championship aspirations are dashed by covid results. It’s already happened to several teams, but it’ll hit that much harder when they’re so close to the finish line. We may end up with two G5 teams in the playoffs. Not likely, but definitely a possibility.
Oddly, I’ve watched more NFL this year than I have in the past 5 years combined. It just feels like more of an actual season than whatever college football is trying to cobble together.
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Who would those G5s be? Cincinnati and Liberty? 
Oh god, please no. I might hate Liberty more than you know who. Sounds crazy, and I don’t fully understand it myself, but that’s just how I feel.
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Liberty is all the crazy of BYU but on steroids. They are every bad thing BYU is and stands for and more.
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But they aren’t our rival.
This is about football, not politics. I root against BYU because they are our rival, not because they are religious. Give me Liberty every day over the zoobs.
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Fair point. Very fair.
The Falwells forced their way into politics, and Liberty University is the Falwells, so the two cannot be divorced. Besides, I see the Falwells and their baby (the religious right) as a direct threat to our democracy, which is bigger than politics imo. Some programs represent issues that transcend sports. Penn State makes that list, and that surely has nothing to do with politics.
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They definitely can be divorced; many people are able to do it.
If I start rooting against universities due to disagreeable politics or bad behavior, I’m gonna quickly run out of options.
But I’m a hypocrite. I root against Stanford because I dislike elitism.
Alright, can we please keep the politics out of this? Regardless of how you feel about the Falwells, Liberty, or BYU, this thread is not for politics.
It’s for bitching about not having live University of Utah sports.
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I strongly disagree with the asterisk nonsense. I’m a Dodgers fan, and the World Series victory is a victory. It was a compressed season, but the playoffs were actually much more difficult as there were more teams involved. Honestly, I wish baseball was like this all the time, the 162 game season just is too much.
If Utah ran the table and won the national championship, it would be un-asterisked in my mind, and the minds of every fan.
My only concern is that bogus teams with bad programs such as BYU and Cincinnati are getting some buzz about the NC (although it’s more in the deluded minds of both of those fanbases). The ACC will probably get two teams in (ND and Clemson, hate them both) while the Big 10 and SEC get the other two slots, and our Pac-12, nada.
Actually, the NCAA should pull its head out of its digestive tract and redo the playoffs like the MLB, NBA, and others have done. Why not a 12 team playoff with every conference getting 1 team, 1 team from the Group of 5 that plays in a conference, and six wild cards (so the TDS can get destroyed by a real school). The top 4 teams get a bye.
All 12 teams would have to be bubbled somewhere so that no game gets canceled.
That would make a metric crap tonne of money, people would love it, and the screwed up regular season can be overlooked.
And no asterisks necessary.
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This season shows exactly why the P5 needs to break off. If they expand the playoffs and let a G5 in, it will be Hawaii in a BCS bowl all over again.
That comparison doesn’t really work. MLB played a compressed season, but each team played an equal amount of games. You are going to have D1 teams that play what amounts to a normal season, teams that play 4-5 games if they’re lucky, and everything in between. And that’s not even taking into account the crazy number of players that either opted out right before the season began, or who have been forced out of competition due to infection (well rounded teams should be able to work through this, but these are unprecedented issues).
There’s no way fans would feel like a five win team is deserving of a national championship, if such a scenario played out. Hell, fans here whine every year about SEC teams playing tomato cans late in the season. If Utah ran the table, and somehow managed to eek into the playoffs, fans everywhere would lose their minds.
If they went on to win a national championship it would have an asterisk the size of a watermelon next to it. A team in mid-season form with relatively fresh legs, and limited injuries? I’m sure college football fans, that already tend to be soooo level headed, will totally roll with that.
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Eh. BYU’s national championship has a big old asterisk by it and they still have a trophy to show off to recruits and rub in our faces.