Well, lookee here, all y’all.
It turns out we are in Kansas, anymore — and Oklahoma and Texas and Iowa and all the others — with our little dog Toto and Cam Rising, too.
It’s official. On Friday, Aug. 2, Utah, and everyone connected to or who cares about or who cheers for or who objectively covers the Utes, moved into unfamiliar territory, a stretch that’s left all of us out yonder here in the West trying to figure out how to fit in, how to talk, how to get comfortable with and on the new landscape. We’re fixin’ to give it a whirl. BYU already made the jump, learning culture and lingo and geography from the cornfields of Iowa to the region where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain to the expanse of the Red River basin to the twang of Texas to boot scootin’ line dancing in every honky-tonk here, there, everywhere to the edges of the Queen City to … what’s this, the Mountain State? Parts of West Virginia are gorgeous and all, but those aren’t mountains. No, these are real mountains. But we digress. Now it’s Utah’s turn to get used to it, to embrace it, to try to defeat it.
The Big 12 neighborhood has gotten a spell bigger and better. And might — Jesus and Brett Yormark willing — get time zone by time zone a spell bigger and better yet. Today, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, West Virginia, Ohio, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Florida; tomorrow, the world. There are ready-to-build-on open lots for sale just down the road a piece.
From first appearances, the Utes already have the nicest, most spacious abode on the block. The new neighbors suspected and figured Utah wanted an even more luxurious home in a whole different subdivision uptown to the Big Ten, but the moving vans were redirected to this place instead, a league where trucks like Utah’s stop.
A smidgen of advice for us, though. The Utes no longer are in the land of roses, of wine and cheese, of haughty misplaced West Coast privileges and presumptions and half-empty stadiums and such, of beaches and Pacific breezes and Hollywood and glamor, and all that. We’ve traded in the sounds of the Grateful Dead and Pearl Jam for the sweet-countrified tunes of George Strait and Willie Nelson.
And as Willie the Great once warbled it, “Wherever you are, be there.”
Not only are all Utes there now, here now, they’re favored and figuring to do what matters most — not just win football games, but win more of ‘em than anybody else. The Big 12 is the best college basketball conference in the country, but that said, football there is king.
And the new move-ins are expected, somebody said, not just to win the whole durn thing, that’s right, the entire kit and caboodle, but to qualify for the expanded CFB playoff to boot. It’s as though there’s a new sheriff in town.
Hooo-ey.
We’ll see about that. The Utes — and all of us in and around them — are Big 12 greenies, set to wander through a new frontier. There are some familiar faces on the schedule in this first go-round, teams like Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and BYU, but the Utes also have to go through Boone Pickens’ place, and play host to the likes of Baylor and TCU and Iowa State.
Actually, a bird’s-eye review indicates that Utah has an utterly manageable slate over this initial run through the Big 12. Most of the harder games are at Rice-Eccles, a place everybody back there in God’s country hears tell is a tough mother of a spot for visitors to win. League roadies, besides OK State, include ASU, Houston, Colorado and UCF. That’s like a six-pack of Big 12 beer drank on a buzzard-hot day — light.
Every other conference opponent is gonna have to fight through the mess stirred up on the regular here in Salt Lake City, where the Utes have been dang-near unbeatable. A challenge, then, is thrown down.
Basketball will be a whole ‘nother story.
Either way, for the time being at least, everyone from Morgantown to Lubbock, from Stillwater to Ames, from Manhattan to Fort Worth, and everywhere beyond and in between, seems to be sending out the wheelin’ welcome wagon to all Utes. The Big 12 may not be all hoity-toity, located in the glitziest stretches of town, stretches all over creation, farther than a good hound dog can run and hunt in a month. (Speaking of stretches, the Utes will travel about as many miles — almost, anyways — this football season as any team in the conference.) Where were we? Oh, yeah, the Big 12 might have calloused hands, leathery faces, and be a little rough around the edges, it might be less sophisticated than the Pac-12 was, or thought it was, or as polished up all lickety-split as the Big Ten. It might be penned in with barbed wire around cow towns, featuring football stadiums in dusty outposts, but one thing seems clear, even to us greenhorns out west, and it’s no small thing:
Folks, all y’all, care about y’all’s football — as mentioned, we’re trying to fit in here — in the Big 12. Big time. The stadiums are full, full of crazy people who’d just as soon see the Utes puke their guts out as get a first down.
That’s the real beauty of the place, the far-flung league where the trucks stop, where Utah’s 18-wheel rig has stopped, that’s the charm.
And the Utes and everyone connected to, cheering for, caring about, or objectively covering them are fixin’ to do our best to be dad-gum proud of it.
