Mike Cook's 2 Cents

Coming off of such an amazing season last year, I would have thought it would be hard to get excited for this year. On the contrary, I have been looking forward to tomorrow’s game for the last 2 months, counting down the days. I’m much more excited than I had expected. Why is this? Perhaps because of the opportunity to prove ourselves again. Perhaps because I get to go to the Oregon game. In my opinion, I think I simply really like Utah Football.

My brother and I decided to start buying season tickets last year. Before last year, we just bought tickets for 2 or 3 games a year. Could there be a better year to get season tickets for Utah Football?? I submit that there could not, not just because of their perfect record, but because we were witnesses to some amazing games. If you don’t remember, take a look back at the last two minutes of the Oregon State and TCU games. Amazing. My brother and I even rushed the field after the TCU victory, something that couldn’t be done from home. At the stadium, you can be as loud as you want. At home, you have 1-year-old children who get scared when you shout and jump up and down.

As mentioned above, my brother and I will be making the long trek to Oregon to watch the game. Our parents currently live in Eugene (home of the Ducks) and my father has access to tickets from his boss (normally around $55). This will be the high-point of the season for me, at least until the Holy War (to hell with “Deseret Duel”… Who agreed to this? Not the fans.)

I work and live in Cougar country. This, at times, makes me want to puke. There are a lot of extremely obnoxious BYU fans (and yes, I know this goes both ways.) There are also a lot of cool BYU fans that know how to have fun with the rivalry. Even the president of the company has started dishing it out the past few days. All I have to say to anybody who wants to start smack-talking about this year’s game already is:

Koa Misi Sacking Max Hall

Mind you, both of the aforementioned players are still on their respective teams this year (although Max Hall was arguably Utah’s MVP of last year’s game…)

There’s another point I wanted to touch on dealing with BYU, and that is BYU’s opener. I just finished having a conversation with a co-worker about this. Should I cheer for BYU to win or Oklahoma? On the one side, it’s good for the conference if BYU wins. On the other hand, I would love nothing more than to see BYU get creamed by a top-5 team right after Utah performed such a creaming on Alabama. I simply don’t want BYU to have the glory Utah had. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a rivalry.

However, the decision becomes clear to me once I consider a third point: Utah and BYU are competing (along with TCU) for the conference championship. Sometimes we overlook this in our persuit for national recognition. For this reason, it is the Utes’ best interest to see their in-conference competition fail. Perhaps the best outcome would be for BYU to show their strength and lose by less than a touchdown.