Months later, the $180 million, 136-acre project is still in negotiation. In early December, the team finally released financial information to Salt Lake County leaders who hired an independent consultant to review the team's books and make a recommendation regarding funding. That decision, and Corroon's ensuing decision, should come in January.

Real Salt Lake will play its 2007 season at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

3. Jazz fast start

After three straight years of not qualifying for the NBA playoffs, the Jazz opened the 2006-07 season with a bang, winning 12 of their first 13 games and owning the best win-loss record in the league for much of the 2006 part of the season.

That got Jazz fans wondering not just whether their team would make the playoffs but whether the Jazz would earn a high enough seed to get home-court advantage and maybe become the top team in the Northwest Division.

Utah's success was keyed by a healthy Carlos Boozer, coming off two injury-plagued seasons, and the surging confidence of sophomore point guard Deron Williams. With 2006 draftees Paul Millsap and Ronnie Brewer, the Jazz also have a deeper bench.

4. The mtn.

The Mountain West Conference's new seven-year football deal with CSTV also started off with a bang. Like a bomb going off in the league's face.

Despite selling half the new MWC-only network — oddly named "The mtn." — to Comcast, distribution was miserably bad on cable and worse on satellite. It's still not on DirecTV or Dish Network. Athletic directors at Utah and BYU were reduced to urging fans to call their satellite providers, which helped not one bit. And some cable customers who thought they were set discovered some Cougar and Ute games weren't on The mtn., they were on CSTV or Versus, a channel nobody could readily identify.

All of this led to a whole lot of passionately unhappy fans calling for MWC commissioner Craig Thompson's job, if not his head.

5. Sloan's 1,000th win

With a 101-79 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Dec. 11, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan notched his 1,000th NBA coaching victory.

Sloan's reaction to hearing chants of "Jerry, Jerry," on the night he joined Lenny Wilkens, Don Nelson, Pat Riley and Larry Brown in reaching the milestone plateau? "That's better than hearing 'em boo me," he grumbled.

Sloan — who is in his 19th season with the Jazz after starting his coaching career with the team for which he spent most of his NBA playing career, the Chicago Bulls — wanted nothing to do with all the praise he inevitably received. "All the stuff that goes on with it is not what basketball is about," he said. "Never has been, as far as I'm concerned ... It's about the players, and always will be. I just happened to be in a situation where numbers came up, and I'm still here. So, so be it."