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Utah Utes Sugar Bowl prep is under way

Though it may not equal the 60k that traveled down to the Fiesta Bowl, many Utah fans are prepping for travel to the Big Easy; our group will be driving the 4000 mile round-trip. I encourage as many
True Ute Fans that read this to do the same. Get a group, pool your resources, and take advantage of a great opportunity to bleed red.

Round-Trip Gas: $300

3 Nights Hotel: $300

Sugar Bowl Tickets: $135

Amazing Seafood/Cajun: $100

24 hour drive with best friends and close family, New Years Eve in the French Quarter, being there to witness a great game against one of the nations most storied programs in college football, and all the memories that will come of it......PRICELESS!

Go Utes, LITERALY.

Utah is soon overtaking Miami (OH) as the new cradle of coaches. Look at the current list of HC's from Utah:

(1) former Ute HC Ron McBride - Weber St.
(2) former Ute HC Urban Meyer - Florida
(3) former Ute DC Kyle Whittingham - Utah
(4) former Ute OC Mike Sanford - UNLV
(5) former Ute DC Gary Anderson - Utah St.
(6) former Ute AC Dan Mullen - Mississippi St.

That's 6 Division I Head Coaches in 7 yrs that stood on the Utah sideline mentoring our players. GO UTES!!!

"Rainbow" Utes err...warriors

"'It's the same everywhere around the country. It's something you have to deal with. Everybody has to take finals,' Johnson said."

Well, everyone except football/basketball players in the SEC, Brian......down there, they have graduate assistants, tutors, and TA's taking their finals for them.

Around the bowl and through the hole.

Go UTES!

Some of these events coordinators should be FIRED. Anybody see the Utah-BYU pregame?

The ceremony to "honor" the seniors had the players running out one at a time, the announcer and scoreboard having no correlation to who it was. And to cap it off, you had the flyover and BYU run out right in the middle of it. Nothing like booing your own seniors, eh?

It was a total disaster and an embarrassment to the university. So now they're on a paid trip to tour around New Orleans? What a joke.

Urban may have coached at Utah, but, it's a bit of a stretch to say that he was a product of Utah football; Urban used Utah as more of a stepping stone, than an incubator.

On the other hand, Kyle Whittingham, Fred Whittingham, Kalani Sitake, Aaron Roderick, Mike Holmgren, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Leach, Andy Reid, and Brian Billick are all products of BYU football.

Sugar Bowl Trip Budget?
$100 per nite at New Years for Lodging in Norleans?
Maybe in a hostel shelter on a cot.
$100 Cajun Dinner...If you eat alone.
No mention of a Bourbon Street Toddy/Entertainment.
This is Exactly Why The Utes should play in Zona.
Go Utes!

RE: Ute fans making plans too:

That is a heck of a roadie. Does anyone know how many of the alotted tickets have sold?

Product of BYU football? How many in the list you created have actually said "NO" to returning to BYU? It would seem that the consensus among these individuals is that BYU is a great place to be FROM.

I think you are giving BYU a lot of credit it doesn't deserve. All these folks were gifted athletes in their day and would have succeeded regardless of where they played in college. Are any of these individuals NOT LDS? Therein is the tie to BYU.

Regarding Urban Myer, he clearly feels differently than your post suggests as his relationship with Kyle and heartfelt condolences at the passing of Elder Wirthlin would attest.

Are you the spokesperson for Myer now?

re: New cradle of coaches - whoever responded to the original statement must be a BYU follower who will always try to say something negative about the Utes. For your information, Mr. Lavell Edwards is a product of USU and without him, BYU would still be at the bottom of the heap annually.

went to Utah

Do you have any idea how illogical and lacking in historical understanding your post is?

ALL of the aforementioned coaches were tutored by a college coaching legend at BYU.

LaVell Edwards was an offensive lineman at Utah State, then a high school coach at Granite, then a defensive coach at BYU. It wasn't until after he became the head coach at BYU that LaVell developed the passing game that changed the face of college football. LaVell had learned while he was a defensive coach that BYU didn't have the athletes to compete against the defenses geared to stop the 3-yards and a cloud of dust offenses of the time. So LaVell developed his revoluationary (for that time) passing offense to give him an edge over the types of defenses he knew he would be facing.

Everyone of the aforementioned coaches were tutored by LaVell at BYU and have incorporated what they learned into their own coaching.

Urban Meyer is one of the top coaches in the NCAA, but he brought his coaching knowledge with him to Utah. He didn't learn it from somebody at Utah. His friendship with Kyle, notwithstanding, Urban is not a product of Utah football.

And the delusion continues. I have friends who played on BYU's so called national championship team who have told me that LaVell Edwards did little to coach the team. That is, his assistants were the unsung heroes LaVell was a figure head.

What LaVelle did is institute the passing game that has changed college football. Teaching??? Not so much.

Please don't come to me with your BYU gripes. I didn't play for him, my BYU player friends did. Believe what you want.

"Are any of these individuals NOT LDS?"

Steve Sarkisian is a Catholic.

The others are probably all LDS, but, BYU has had many, many players and assistant coaches through the years who were not LDS.

Just a few examples: Jamie Hill (BYU defensive coordinator) is not LDS. Gary Shiede, Jim McMahon, and Ty Detmer (a few members of BYU's quarterback factory) were not LDS when they came to BYU.

LaVell was the architect of the BYU passing game starting in 1972. He assembled the staff and chose the direction of the program. It was under LaVell's direction that BYU's offense continued to be refined. Coaches from all over the country would come to BYU's spring practices to learn BYU's offense.

Like any good administrator, which is what a good head coach is, he hires good people, gives them specific responsibilities, and then trusts them to do their job.

Your 1984 BYU team friends may not have seen LaVell down in the trenches teaching blocking techniques or footwork, but, it was because of LaVell and BYU that your friends learned what they learned about how to play and, in same cases, coach the game.

Do you tell your friends that you consider their National Championship a joke?

There was NOTHING supposed about it. BYU earned their National Championship in the exact same way that every major college football team has earned theirs, in the minds of the voters who selected them as National Champions.

Even in the current incarnation, 2/3's of the formula for earning a spot in the NCG is earned in the minds of the voters.

What you don't get is that BYU is not a major college football team or program.

BYU won a partial national championship in 1984.

It is now 2008. Next year its been 25 years since that all happend. Thats a quarter century.

BYU's last team that had any real national exposure was the Cotton Bowl Team in 1996. That was still 12 years ago.

In the modern era, say since the year 2000,
BYU's has best teams have went 11 and 2, 4 times and now they are making a historic 4th straight Las Vegas Bowl.

WOW.

This state only major college football team in the modern era has now went 12 and 0, TWICE, with its secound BCS game now on deck.

Win or loose against the Tide, and Utah still has two more BCS games than BYU.

I would rather have my team go 7 and 5, or 8 and 4, every couple years and then bust off a 12 and 0, BCS bound season here and there.

Then watch my program remain a stagnet 11 and 2, and play in low tier bowl games, year after year.

GO UTES!!

BYU won a concensus National Championship as selected by every major organization that awarded national championships in 1984.

Consensus National Champions
Year School Selecting organization
1983 Miami (Fla.) AP, FWAA, NFF, USA/CNN, UPI
1984 Brigham Young AP, FWAA, NFF, USA/CNN, UPI
1985 Oklahoma AP, FWAA, NFF, USA/CNN, UPI

AP - Associated Press
FWAA - Football Writers Association of America
NFF - National Football Foundation/College Football Hall of Fame
UPI - United Press International
USA/CNN - USA Today/CNN

As for national recognition, this will be BYU's 3rd straight Top 25 finish.

This will be Utah's first Top 25 finish since 2004.

The biggest difference between BYU and Utah this season was Utah played BYU and TCU at home and BYU played TCU and Utah on the road. Luck of the draw, Utah earned the MWC championship and BCS by beating the Cougars and Frogs at home, but I'm not convinced the Utes would have come out on top if the schedules had been reversed.

You may not have stopped to consider the point but all of your comments regarding LaVell's influence on the passing game support my original statement. Again, LaVell changed college football with the passing attack.

My friends already know what I think of the fact that by a stroke of luck every team in the country had a loss. BYU had no influence on losses sustained by other teams. It just happened; leaving BYU the only undefeated team. My friends also know that I think BYU was very fortunate to draw a 6-5 Michigan team at the Holiday Bowl that year and that it was by virtue of the system in place at that time that BYU, the only undefeated team in the country, was given the nc. Given the system in place at that time, it couldn't go to anyone else.

BTW, I was at the Holiday Bowl in 1984...my friends on the BYU football team got me the tickets.

You are correct, my friends on the 1984 team did not see "LaVell down in the trenches teaching blocking techniques or footwork" because he didn't do that. As I said, LaVell's assistants did the teaching.

Of course BYU won a consensus (note spelling) National Championship. BYU was the only undefeated team in the country. Another way to say the same thing is to say that every team in the country in 1984 had lost a game except BYU.

The system in place at the time had no one else it could crown National Champions. Even I would have voted for BYU under the same criteria. Was BYU the best team in the country? No way. But, BYU was the only undefeated team in the country. Hence, NC

That was a long time ago guys. Who cares now?