Gordon Monson: Spectator sports in Utah are down. Who will rise up?

I feel for sports fans in Utah in 2025, at least along one line of thinking.

The line that holds that winning is the main objective in sports, that contending for championships is the thing that hooks them in, that legitimate competitiveness is what stirs their passion, what causes them to get involved emotionally and to figuratively live and die with nightly or weekly results. That’s what makes it OK in their momentarily-warped minds to go ahead and pay 200 bucks for each ticket, 20 bucks for parking, 15 bucks for nachos, 8 bucks for a beverage, and afterward to walk away from a game feeling like it all was a darn fine investment — and looking forward to doing it again the night after next or a week later.

How many teams around here are making fans feel that way these days? How many are making fans feel as though what they are watching is more than mere entertainment, rather it is an extension of who they are, an extension worth circling around the water cooler at work and rehashing all the key moments, an extension passed on to their sons and daughters in a kind of intergenerational transmission of rooting interest, of rooting connection both with the team and with each other?

I’m just not seeing it now, not like it once was.

Maybe that’s understandable, considering that competitive success in sports is cyclical. No team or set of teams always wins, always contends for a title. Some are better at it than others. But in Utah, it’s something of a wasteland out there right now. Not completely. It’s reminiscent of the line in the classic film “Princess Bride” when Miracle Max told Inigo Montoya and Feezik that Westley was only “mostly dead,” not “all dead.”

No, Utah’s major spectator sports at present are not dead dead.

BYU football is alive. It certainly was through the 2024 season, finishing 11-2 and winning its bowl game against a talented Colorado team. The Cougars were in the running for a Big 12 title and they missed the College Football Playoff by a hair, and left their fans amped up for what might come next season. Good for them.

Who else?

Umm … the Utah Hockey Club? Nah, not yet, anyway. The new guys are … new, and that by itself brings interest and maybe will build it, too. Not just among those already in the seats at the Delta Center, but also potential fans in the community who are still deciding whether to pour their hearts and souls into that team and that sport. The minor league Grizzlies have been around forever, the Golden Eagles before that, so there are hockey lovers here. And it will be interesting to see how long it takes UHC to skate, if ever, to the top of the NHL. It’s a wonderful sport, a sport that has gripped other communities in the pursuit of and the hoisting of Lord Stanley’s Cup. I lived just outside of Philadelphia when the Flyers ascended to the top of the league in the 1970s, and that place went bonkers for Bobby Clarke and Dave “The Hammer” Schultz and Rick MacLeish and Bernie Parent and Bob “Hound Dog” Kelly and Moose Dupont, and … well, you get the idea. That hockey happening in Philly still ranks among the most memorable of the sports experiences I’ve witnessed.

Can it happen here? And if it can, will it outpace the rebuild of … You-Know-Who?

We’ve talked about it a thousand times because it’s so in-yo-face. After blowing up a perennial playoff team, Jazz ownership and management have stumbled and bumbled in the attempt to figure out not just who they are, but what path they should take to rediscover the aforementioned competitiveness. Granted, it’s not easy. They tried to win and then tried to lose over the past two seasons and now they’re a full go on embracing defeat. When I watch the Jazz play now, it’s like watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Roadrunner. Sometimes they miss it by thaaaaat much and sometimes they miss it by 500 miles.

A whole lot of Jazz fans have resigned themselves to the losing, but for a heretofore proud franchise and fan base unaccustomed to this sort of ineptitude, this process — whether it’s trustable or not — is painful, a deal with the devil that might be necessary, but it will only be successful if Ryan Smith and Danny Ainge 1) know what the hell they’re doing, and 2) are lucky enough to get an open shot at what and who they need.

Either way, what’s happening now, what’s going on in the Delta Center, is a galaxy far, far away from what Jazz fans of the past, even without ever gaining a title, experienced and enjoyed.

Pity.

College basketball at BYU has had some moments, but this season, after so much hype in the hiring of coach Kevin Young and the bringing in of talents like Egor Demin and Kanon Catchings, and the pledge of even more promised talent in the commitment of AJ Dybantsa, most of what BYU basketball can supposedly be remains out in the clouds somewhere, not down on the court. But if they can catch fire, as Catchings did this week against Baylor, there might be reason to hope in Provo.

Utah basketball is … nothing compared to what it was in its days of glory, back when the Huntsman Center was jammed with fans and the locker room was full of future NBA players. Nowhere is the evidence that winning is what draws fannies into the seats on display more than in the open red acreage at the Huntsman, where you could park the Hindenburg smack dab in the middle of the building and not block anyone’s view.

Oh, the humanity.

The Red Rocks pack the Huntsman Center. Maybe, after three straight third-place finishes, this is the year they go out and win it all.

Utah women’s basketball has been a bright spot in recent years, too, thanks to Lynne Roberts' work to build that program into a team consistently in — or at the moment under new coach Gavin Petersen, right on the cusp — of the Top 25.

Utah State basketball is also a bright light in the darkness. Or, at least a light. How bright it is depends on how you define illumination. It doesn’t seem to matter who coaches the Aggies, they win and go on winning. Ryan Odom or Danny Sprinkle or Jerrod Calhoun, it just doesn’t matter. You can go back even further. It does, yeah, but the Ags’ problem seems to be that their coaches win too much and then, after making the NCAA Tournament, bounce to a higher-paying, higher-profile job somewhere else.

This season, after Sprinkle jumped to Washington, Utah State is 17-2, and battling for another Mountain West title and another trip to March Madness. Calhoun predicted when he was hired that his team might win a national championship, the national championship, and if it does that, I’ll drive to Logan and sing the Aggies fight song in a coconut bra and a grass skirt as a part of USU’s celebration party.

Either way, the Ags are winning.

And maybe, just maybe, they’ll win in football now that Bronco Mendenhall will be leading that effort.

Everybody knows Utah football slumped big time in 2024, all after being picked to win the Big 12 in its first go-round in that league. I never thought I’d see the Utes lose in these times under Kyle Whittingham as many consecutive games as they did this past season. But lose they did. Lose (1), lose (2), lose (3), lose (4), lose (5), lose (6), lose (7). They were winless from the end of September until the end of November. It was sad and sorry.

That stretch was two fairways over from what used to be straight down the middle at Rice-Eccles, pure and all … you know, back when Utah was winning the Pac-12 and going to Rose Bowls.

Real Salt Lake might also be a beacon of community competitive hope. RSL set a club record for points during the regular season in 2024, totaling 59 and putting up a record of 16-7-11, finishing as the third seed in MLS’ West, but then getting eliminated from the playoffs by Minnesota United FC. Real also qualified for the 2025 CONCACAF Champions Cup, which stirs memories of the good ol’ days when the club ascended to previous heights.

There are, indeed, successes around here in other sports, such as cross country at BYU, but the biggies, the sports that traditionally not only draw large crowds but have thousands and thousands of young athletes dreaming of and clamoring to one day compete in them, have seen better days. As have the fans who watch them.

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