For much of Utah’s game against Wyoming, I kept thinking not about the Cowboys, rather about Texas Tech. By the way the Utes were playing, at least through the first two quarters, it appeared as though they were doing likewise, regardless of that final 31-6 count.
Anybody else on that same boat? Pretty sure skipper Kyle Whittingham was. Even if he says he wasn’t … he was. Anyone with eyes to see was.
Utah most certainly was not completely focused in the early going on its business at hand in Laramie. Nope, couldn’t have been. Not with all the mistakes made, the penalties committed, the fumble coughed up, the many disconnects, the misses. Not with so much inept offense. Not with the manner in which the Utes, regardless of the unbalanced yardage totals they racked up, nearly made Wyo. look like it was their equal.
Horrors.
In a different place, in a different building, the Red Raiders went ahead and crushed Oregon State on Saturday, by their score of 45-14. In doing so, the way they accomplished that, the Techsters propped themselves up as wholly worthy of this week’s hubbub at Rice-Eccles, waltzing to a big lead and coasting from there, all comfortable and casual. They put on display what everyone suspected — that oil money can draw in the talented components of a mighty team.
That’s life at the top end of college football these days. Anybody complaining about that is wasting time. CFB is what it is, only partially what it was. But money handed out, above board or under it, more often than not wins, has always won, as long as it’s organized and properly coached up.
Organizing and coaching up inexpensive dogs almost never leads to victory, try as those gutty little souls have done and still do. Bless their hearts.
Texas Tech’s blessings have come all foundational via cash on the barrel.
As for the Utes, they ultimately may have held up their end of next Saturday’s big Big 12 deal, particularly on defense, but they got there with a burp, a belch and a cough in other phases. I mean, it was 3-zip at the break.
It’s not as though Utah was ever in danger of actually losing at Wyoming. Let’s not get crazy here. That defense is too good for any of that nonsense. But the Utes did stumble and bumble through those initial quarters, battling as much with themselves as with the other guys. At Wyoming’s end, its attack was feeble. Josh Allen wasn’t walking through that door. Even if he had, Morgan Scalley’s crew might have made it matter little.
Because of fellows with bad intentions like John Henry Daley and others, the Ute O had time to fiddle and faddle in finding its footing. It all, most of it, got straightened out in the third quarter, when that offense got 14 points, then 14 more in the fourth. All told, the Utes rolled for 311 rushing yards. What had been scant turned substantial, with Devon Dampier doing his Dampier-est to fight off that sorry start.
So, yeah, it was a win, a 25-pointer at that, against an inferior opponent, but nobody’s socks were blown off. And it’s a compliment to Utah football that that’s the expectation — to throttle from start to finish an opponent like Wyoming, even up there where the deer and the antelope play and the fans hurl urine bags.
Furthermore, on the comparison front, Oregon State is a woebegone team, so maybe TT isn’t so formidable, after all. Come on over to Rice-Eccles and try to put that beatdown on the Utes. To quote the dude on the other end of the phone, speaking to Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills in “Taken” — “Good luck.”
It’s undeniable, though, that the Utes have to clean up some messes, not just to show up other teams, rather to be what they can be. What they’ve given strong hints of what they, if they’re true to themselves, might be, should be, what they’ll have to be with the Big 12 challenges ahead of them.
Play a complete game. If they do that, week after week, they’ll get what they deserve. And if they don’t … well, they’ll get what they deserve.
Contrary to what Clint Eastwood’s William Munny said to Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett in another Hollywood classic, “Unforgiven,” deserve’s got everything to do with it.