Utah Utes football: Fans just want close Sugar Bowl

As 2008 comes to a close, I'm wondering if the Utah Flash will morph into the Jazz by mid-January due to all the injuries, if the Utes can pull off an upset Friday night in New Orleans, how many more college basketball games we'll have decided by a tenth of a second and whether the Eagles can win the Super Bowl ...

The big sports event of the week for local fans is the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, where the Utah takes on mighty Alabama. Not many folks are giving the Utes a chance with 82 percent of 85,000 voters on ESPN Sports Nation favoring the Crimson Tide. Diehard Ute fans are confident, but in talking to most fans, the usual refrain I hear is "I just hope we can keep it close and not get blown out." So unless the Utes pull a Hawaii and lose big, most U. fans should be fairly happy. If they win, they'll be doing cartwheels down Main Street ...

The bowl derby is off and running and the Mountain West Conference finds itself near the top again with a 2-1 record so far. Only the Pac-10 and ACC are better at 2-0. It's still early with the SEC and Big 12 not even playing any games yet, but the MWC was first among the 11 college conferences last year with a 4-1 record and can match that mark again if Air Force can beat Houston in the Armed Forces Bowl and Utah can pull the upset in New Orleans ...

Seven-foot, 265-pound Kosta Koufos scores 18 and 14 points in back-to-back games. Seven-foot-1, 300-pound Kyrylo Fesenko gets a 12-point, 11-rebound double-double against Yao Ming. Heck, who needs Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur and Paul Millsap? Seriously, with those two youngsters (Koufos is 19, Fesenko just turned 22), putting up such numbers in a regular-season game against the Rockets, you have to feel good about the future of the Jazz in the middle. The question is how the two youngsters will find any playing time once the injured big guys get healthy ...

How about the Philadelphia Eagles defying the odds Sunday and sneaking into the playoffs thanks to an unlikely victory by the Oakland Raiders in Tampa Bay a Houston upset of Chicago and their own blowout win over the choking Dallas Cowboys? The Eagles have a lot of fans around here with Andy Reid (BYU) as the coach, Kevin Curtis (Utah State) a top receiver, and Stewart Bradley (Highland High) as a starting linebacker ...

Isn't it amazing how important one-tenth of a second can be in sports? Both the BYU and Utah basketball teams learned that the hard way in the past nine days. In the Cougars' case, they wished they could have found an extra one-tenth of a second, which would have given them a victory over Arizona State, while in the Utes' case, they wished another tenth had ticked off, which would given them a chance to play five more minutes against Utah State in overtime ...