Since nobody else has the balls to say it, I’ll go ahead. This has been one of the most disappointing years of U sports in recent memory. Whether it’s through failing to meet expectations or through losing half their respective team, all of the programs at the U have suffered this year.
Well, almost all of them. I guess the gymnastics team still has a chance to save face. But as for the rest of them?
Seriously, name one program that met the expectations of fans — or even its own coach! I don’t know if that warranted an exclamation point, but I think that just shows you guys how disappointed I was with our athletic programs this year.
Let’s start with football. Two years after Urban Meyer spoiled us with a BCS victory, Kyle Whittingham was leading the team to?drum roll please?the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl.
We were finally nearing the peak of college football two years ago, and now we’re playing in a bowl game that should feature Holy Cross and Western Illinois. Nice work, Kyle, love what you’ve done with the place. I’ve never seen a coach more pleased with mediocrity.
OK, I’ve taken my shots at them. Let’s move on to volleyball. I had the pleasure of covering this team last semester and was impressed with everything about it. It went through its conference schedule without a flaw and made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament before getting knocked off by powerhouse UCLA. But after the season ended, the program took an immense hit in the form of its two key players quitting. They gave no reason as to why they were walking out, either, leaving many fans and casual observers scratching their heads.
Meanwhile, the soccer team may not have lost anybody, but the season ended in relative disappointment with a loss to Portland. Although I’ve come to understand that Portland is pretty good at soccer, this still shouldn’t happen. We’re a much larger school. We have more funding. We have better players. And yet they’re the ones that advance to the next round.
As far as men’s basketball goes, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? Yes, it was a disappointing year. Yes, we had plenty of talented players. No, we didn’t have a coach who knew how to utilize those players and basically threw in the towel in the closing weeks of the season. I don’t want to come off sounding like I could do it better?well, maybe I could?but that’s not the point. The point is this: There are much more intricate offenses being run at high schools around the valley.
If there were a sport that might have exceeded expectations, it would be women’s basketball, and that’s only because the bar was set too low to do so.
One year removed from the Thorburn-Smith era, you couldn’t expect too much from the team, but as always, Elaine Elliott molded them into winners and an eventual NIT berth. How do they repay her? How about with four players quitting the team on the same day? Unbelievable.
It hurts me to say this because I am a strong supporter, but our athletics program seems to be going down the crapper. Never before (at least in my lifetime) have so many U programs done so poorly or (hurts me to say this) lost to BYU so much.
But hey, for every negative, there’s a positive. Maybe there was a reason those players left the U. Maybe there was a reason the basketball and football teams played as poorly as they did. Maybe it’s all part of some big conspiracy to unseat Chris Hill from his all-empowering throne of athletics directing.
There isn’t any way around it. For a Utah fan, this was a disappointing year. Just as that bitch Murphy once put it, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
The way I see it, we could deal with this two different ways. We could all be depressed about it and go crawl inside a bottle of Jack, or we could wipe the slate clean and start over next year. I prefer the former.
