This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It was a weird and wild weekend in the Pac-12, if you stayed up until midnight Saturday to watch. One game was resolved with an on-side kick recovered for a touchdown (Arizona State beat Cal), and one was won in overtime (Washington beat Arizona).

We'll get to those in the Pick-6, whichhttp://bit.ly/2d6WNNA";> in case you missed the first is a semi-regular batch of links curated by myself that offer good reads about the Pac-12, Utah and more. But starting with a Pac-12 story that has a lot of relevance to Utah readers …

TODAY'S TOP LINK • The San Francisco Chronicle's Claire Fahy writeshttp://www.sfchronicle.com/collegesports/article/Mission-accomplished-Stanford-becomes-a-haven-9243041.php";> about Stanford's Mormon players on the football team. Those who follow recruiting are keenly aware that the Cardinal seem to pluck at least one player every year out of Utah, and three of the four players profiled in the story are Utahns: Dallas Lloyd, Sean Barton and Brandon Fanaika.

http://bit.ly/1uqNYjp";>Matt Piper did a story on Stanford assistant Lance Anderson (who was considered an outside candidate for BYU's opening last winter) who acts as the team's chief recruiter in Utah. But this story takes a dive from the Cardinal perspective, noting that it wasn't long ago when Stanford was not welcome ground for Mormons:

The fact that a Mormon conversion took place on a secular college campus in the middle of Silicon Valley might seem surprising. There was a time in 1970 when Stanford refused to schedule games against BYU in protest of what some considered the university's institutional racism. Today, the Cardinal football team has three returned missionaries on its roster, with another four set to join by 2018.

The story describes Fanaika,http://bit.ly/1rLMkLv";> who is the younger brother of former Ute Jason Fanaika, converting one of his teammates to the LDS faith, among a handful of anecdotes. Utah, BYU and Utah State have plenty of competition for LDS players.

Some other links of note:

• SB Nation blog Every Day Should Be Saturday is farcical by its nature, but Spencer Hall is one of the most entertaining perspectives in college sport. He ranked Utah No. 10 in http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/9/25/13043888/tennessee-volunteers-florida-gators-2016";>his entirely subjective rankings, writing: "The Utes did everything you hope a team does when it plays without a shred of fear for how silly they might look, i.e., you winging plays down the field in Madden with reckless abandon."

• For those scouting to the next game, the San Jose Mercury News' Jon Wilner had http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/25/cal-football-takeaways-from-the-loss-at-arizona-state/";>some takeaways from Cal's 51-41 loss at Arizona State. He highlights, for one, that the Golden Bears allowed a whopping 41 points in the second half, wearing down over the course of the game.

• The Oregonian was on hand for Oregon's 41-38 loss to Colorado at home, which columnist John Canzano writes should behttp://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/john_canzano/index.ssf/2016/09/canzano_oregon_ducks_loss_is_a.html";> a wakeup call for Mark Helfrich and the program. Canzano wrote of Helfrich: "I appreciated that he was finally feeling what we can all plainly see — Oregon is in trouble."

• Elsewhere in college football, LSU made waves by firing coach Les Miles, who almost certainly will come into play in the offseason coaching carousel. But Sports Illustrated broke down why, after narrowly dodging the axe last year, http://www.campusrush.com/les-miles-fired-lsu-tigers-2016375639.html";>Miles was back on the chopping block after only four games: "He had been handed a chance to make the necessary changes to make LSU competitive in the SEC West, and he hadn't taken advantage of that chance."

APROPOS OF NOTHING • Two deaths rocked the sports world on Sunday, and with http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-arnold-palmer-snap-story.html";>all due respect to Arnold Palmer, one of them was still in the prime of his career when he was tragically cut down in a boating accident.

Major League Baseball is in mourning for one of its bright, rising stars Jose Fernandez. A number of outlets had extremely moving coverage of the 24-year-old's death and the ripple that was felt throughout locker rooms around the country, buthttp://sports.yahoo.com/news/jose-fernandez-the-american-dream-172335052.html";> this column by Yahoo!'s Jeff Passan really strikes a powerful note, particularly when talking about his harrowing passage from Cuba:

Fernandez tried and failed to defect three times. On the fourth, when he was 15, he awoke one night to the sounds of thrashing in the water. A woman had fallen off the boat. He didn't know who. He dove in anyway. It turned out to be Fernandez's mom, Maritza. He swam out into the waves and told her to hold on. For an eternity, he dragged himself and his mother through crashing waves, through fatigue and the fetid taste of salt water and the ocean that wanted to take both of them, and made it back to the boat. A few days later, they were in Mexico. On April 5, 2008, they arrived in Tampa. All they wanted was a better life.

…

For all his talent, all his achievement, Fernandez never lost perspective on what allowed him to thrive. He loved freedom – love the ability to say what he believed, to think what he wanted, to live without restriction. When he became an American citizen in 2015, seven years after coming to the United States, he waved a small flag and talked about how thankful he was. When he and the Marlins played at Fort Bragg Fourth of July weekend, the moment consumed him. He'd never forget Cuba. But he was a proud American.

It's harrowing, then, to see the country Jose Fernandez loved and embodied so well keep talking about building walls, about keeping people like him out, because of fear and insecurity. Fernandez gave back far more than he ever took, and he wasn't even here a decade.

kgoon@sltrib.com
Twitter: @kylegoon