The Ute Fan Laments

I stumbled into my apartment last night in mourning. When I walked in my roommates greeted me.

"How was the game?"

Bad. Very bad. I watched in horror as the Utes stubbed their toe up in Logan, upending order in the universe as we know it.

"How did that happen?"

A few dumb plays by the Utes. A few great plays by the Aggies.

"Well, that's pretty classy of you. Normally people just say it was rigged or the refs screwed us."

Well, there was a call here, and a no call there. That's frustrating. But no one would say the Utes should have won that game. And here I am to pick up the pieces of my Friday night.

Because my apartment does not have cable I watched the whole game at an SUU campus lounge area (side note, I'm latching on to Notre Dame this year, because their the only team I can consistently watch at home). I coped on my way home by buying a chimichango from Roberto's drive-thru and renting a funny movie. Oh, and I ate some of my roommates cake. Wait, Nate, aren't you going to be wrestling on the Adams Theater without a shirt on in less than a month? Shouldn't you be avoiding deep fried foods and desserts? Shut up, conscience, you're not my mom. Losing puts me into a state so low I can only describe it as alcohol-free alcoholism. I just want the pain to go away.

And here I sit, the next day. There is certainly much for the Utah fan to ponder. Why did we refuse to hand the ball off to John White when it was 1st and goal at the 6 yard line? Why do we put our freshman pocket passing quarterback in for the wildcat when he is neither fast or powerful? Why don't we just throw the kicker out there? How did Utah State get such a significantly better quarterback than us? Utah State? How?

Here's the problem. The Quarterback quandary is blowing up worse than Westeros after Robert Baratheon's death (its not my fault you don't watch Game of Thrones). Jordan Wynn not only is injury prone, he's also apparently not good. Injury prone + not good = bowl game in a cold weather city. While there's no word yet on the extent of his injury, he should probably not start another game at Utah. There is no building for the future as long as he's in the equation. Sad, especially given his brilliant play early in his career.

So the choice lies between Jon Hays and Travis Wilson. Now at this moment I would like to point out that Devonte Christopher and Luke Matthews are now seniors and have yet to find a consistent quarterback to throw them the ball. Their talents are almost completely wasted. It is paramount that we find an answer to this pronto, or we will be saying the same thing about Dres Anderson and Kenneth Scott. Which is why Wilson MUST be the starter.

At this point, Hays could potentially eke out a win or two more than Wilson. But why focus only on this year?  If job security was gold, Kyle Whittingham would be jumping into a pool of coins that Scrooge McDuck-style. What people want is a Pac-12 champion. They're probably not getting one this year. So maybe Jon Hays could get us to 8-4 or 9-3. But what good does that do us? There's clearly not a huge drop off right now to Wilson. And if he plays from this point forward, he'll be better than Hays by the end of the year. There's also little to no tape on him, so you may even catch BYU or USC's coordinators by surprise a la the Brett Ratliff phenomenon.

Take a look at our under performing offensive line. At least they'll get better with time, right? But as it stands right now we are starting 3 seniors and 2 juniors. So with a line made up entirely of upperclassmen, we are flailing miserably. This is a trickier situation, because you legitimately need your best offensive line out there, or someone could get hurt (rhymes with shmuarterback). But you seriously have to consider the fact that we are very thin on the line yet can go 8 deep at wide reciever (all 8 of whom are being marginalized by bad line and quarterback play). Kyle needs to sign a whole offensive line this year, from high school. Juco's are band-aids, you can't build your program off them. Maybe by the time Travis Wilson graduates he'll have a decent offensive line in front of him.

Look, maybe I'm a bit reactionary. After all, 3 out of Utah's 4 best defensive players were out from USU's last two touchdowns. But come on, guys, don't make me go Gold Domer this year.