Saturday night’s radio callers proved that you can draw very different conclusions from playing the “what if?” game.
Utah could have won…
If Brian Johnson played it safe on third-and-goal in the first quarter instead of throwing an interception to Corby Hodgkiss. If Gary Anderson called a prevent defense in the rare circumstance for which it was actually intended. If Derrek Richards caught a paint-by-numbers pass from Johnson deep in BYU’s territory on the U’s last-ditch drive.
Contrarily, BYU could have killed Utah…
If Harvey Unga held onto the ball when the Cougars were threatening following the Hodgkiss pick. If Austin Collie didn’t have a 67-yard score called back for one of three ticky-tack pass interference calls. If Unga caught the world’s softest touchdown toss on fourth-and-five in the final quarter.
To say that any of these things could have happened, though, is to ignore the fact that they all didn’t happen because of hundreds of other random moments that were just as likely to be aberrational themselves.
What the hell does that mean, you ask?
Here’s an example: You probably think you made breakfast this morning by pouring cereal into a bowl and pouring milk onto that cereal. But that’s not even 1 percent of your breakfast’s story.
You made breakfast because you were born and need to eat to survive. Because you woke up on time for work. Because your alarm clock functions properly. Because you fixed it. Because your ex-girlfriend told you to. Because she was tired of being late. Because she was getting grilled by an angry boss. Because her boss is going bald.
In reality, your ex-girlfriend’s boss’ male-pattern baldness — a seemingly trivial detail in your life — is every bit as responsible for the outcome of your breakfast as the cereal and the milk. Thinking of breakfast in terms of “key plays” simply makes it easier for your memory to handle.
This year’s Holy War was unusually difficult to wrap our heads around.
In Albert Camus’ The Stranger, while awaiting trial for murder, the title character concludes that, though his days in prison are excruciatingly long and boring, all the days are so indistinguishable from each other that they seem — collectively — to have passed very quickly.
This game had the same effect. The penalties, third-down inefficiency, punt after punt…all of that faded into a faint haze once the few truly memorable moments in the fourth quarter played out. It seems hard to believe the game lasted three hours, nine minutes.
The truth is that our memory’s bias is obscuring the 140 other plays which had the potential to score a touchdown — and might also have contributed to the aforementioned blunders.
Consider that infamous fourth-and-18.
Sure, hindsight says the Utes should have managed that play differently. But they didn’t, at least in part, because:
1. Utah’s prevent defense allowed BYU to march down the field for the game-winning touchdown last year.
2. Safety Robert Johnson was called for unnecessary roughness earlier and might have been hesitant to provide over-the-top help with his usual zest.
3. Cornerback Brice McCain was the focus of BYU’s passing attack the entire game, and sheer tiredness probably led to his being left in the dust by Collie.
4. Breakfast.
Nobody knows exactly what led to that moment. Likewise, nobody knows how significant it really was. It might not have been any more important than a false start penalty in the second quarter, and we’ll never know for sure because we’ll never get to see how the chain of events would have been altered with a clean snap.
The cold, hard philosophical truth is that BYU won because of infinite reasons, even if it was by a slim margin.
If you’re a Ute fan, though, you’re probably better off not trying to grasp them all.