Before the Utes’ football season started, I saw those red banners all over campus that read “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” and thought they were referring to last season’s dominance as nothin’, in comparison to what they’ll accomplish this year, which would be somethin’.
So I assumed that all the hoopla surrounding the team so far this year would certainly qualify, and the signs would eventually be changed.
That, however, is not the case. Those signs are still up there proclaiming that we ain’t seen nothin’, but I just can’t believe them.
Surely we’ve seen somethin’ at this point in the season. As Urban Meyer pointed out in his column, there have been a series of big accomplishments this season for the Utes, including three victories over major conference opponents, but Utah’s PR people are apparently still not impressed.
So what is it going to take? What is somethin’ and when will you put up the sign that confirms we’ve seen it?
After all, the Utes are No. 7 in the BCS, the highest a non-BCS conference team has ever been ranked in that poll. They’re also ranked in the top 10 in both of the human polls, despite the heavy political and bureaucratic influences, and still this qualifies as nothin’. Texas A&M, a team the Utes slaughtered, continues to impress everyone with big wins, and yet the Utes are still lacking the local respect they deserve.
To me this is almost inexplicable, considering The New York Times and USA Today have featured several articles on the Utes and have seemingly adopted Urban Meyer as their correspondent in the coaching ranks.
Now you can’t tell me that’s nothin’, because that is clearly somethin’ if national syndications are ranting about the Utes. Furthermore, how can it be nothin’ when students can no longer walk into Rice-Eccles with just a student ID? The higher ups are clearly aware of the somethin’ness of this team. Oh, they know its something, but they aren’t saying jack about it. At least those signs aren’t anyway.
Maybe it’s a ploy to keep Urban in town. Like a police officer saying “nothing to see here” when there is clearly something to see, but they just don’t want anyone to see it.
So they pepper downtown and the campus with those banners, which at this point might as well be yellow police tape, and hope no one official walks by and questions them. Yep, we’re all evidence on a crime scene waiting to be analyzed.
But then again those signs could just be preventing the jinx, which in my opinion, is a perfectly valid reason to do something. I wore the same shirt, hat, and didn’t shave during the Red Sox four-game ALCS win streak, just to make sure they wouldn’t lose because of me.
That’s just not practical in the world of PR though. Those vultures usually look for any possible angle to promote a team, so why have they pretended like nothing’s happened all season?
There’s only one explanation.
They clearly intended to keep those banners all season long as a message to the school and the players that this season would be nothin’ if it did not result in somethin’ more than a run-of- the-mill conference title and a Liberty Bowl berth.
Those signs are symbolic of the Utes’ fight for a BCS bowl appearance. They want more than a few blowout wins over good-to-decent opponents. They want more than a regular season-ending victory over BYU.
They will not settle for what they consider to be nothin’ again.
Those signs want a Fiesta Bowl victory, a Heisman Trophy, and another college Coach of the Year award.
Now that would be somethin’.