The college football season is over. Let’s put things into perspective regarding the state of local Ute football. We just watched Washington lose to Michigan for the National Championship as the PAC-12 has now started its money-based, therefore pre-ordained, disintegration.
The Utes, with all their problems in injuries to significant quarterbacks (more than one this year) and other very key players, only lost to Washington by 7 points — at Seattle. The Utes have beaten Michigan three of the last four times we have played them — with the only loss coming in 1992 in “The Big House” at Ann Arbor 10-7. Harbaugh, et al, have refused to play us again since the last beating.
The only time the Utes played Nick Saban’s Alabama team, we shellacked them 31-17 to go undefeated in the 2008 Sugar Bowl, or as Sporting News stated it, “Utah went into the Deep South and virtually ‘seal-clubbed’ Alabama on their home turf.” Then with all the never-ending hype about USC, “Hollywood” Coach Riley, and last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Caleb Williams, the Utes have literally owned the Trojans, beating them four of the last five games and going to the Rose Bowl twice in a row.
While I wished we had done a bit better this year, going 8-5, methinks the collective success of the Utes has been only a little less than astonishing in recent times.
With All-Americans’ QB Cam Rising and tight-end Brent Kuithe, among several other “non-portal evacuees” officially coming back next season, the Utes could go far or even “all the way”!
I now can faintly hear the old, but invigorating, student section cheer of the early ′70s: “Went down to the river, Started to drown, Got thinking about the Utes, And I didn’t go down!!”
Forever onward, Ute fans …
Jeff Clawson, Salt Lake City
