Cyclone Fan – Coming in peace

[DriftlessClone]

Iowa State fan here. Just wanted to say that despite how some of your online fanbase has reacted, I like having Utah in the Big 12. Rice-Eccles seems like a great atmosphere and (outside of your pure disdain for being associated with us) I get the impression Ute fans have a lot in common with schools like us, KSU, OK State, WVU, and TTU. I was hoping to get out for the game this year, but it just wasn’t in the cards.

Any how, I know Saturday doesn’t have the same juice that it looked like it was going to have back in early October, but I still think this is a really interesting match up as you guys still have a realistic bowl shot and we still have a realistic shot at the CCG. I only caught the highlights from your game Saturday (we were still harvesting and I was listening on the radio in a tractor), but a couple things stood out to me:

1) Has Wilson taken a step forward, or did CU let up? I had seen the Houston game and wasn’t very impressed with him. What I saw on the highlights from Saturday looked like a different player.

2) Did your secondary take a step back, or are Sanders/Hunter just that damn good? This feels like more of column B to me, but maybe you guys feel differently.

It seems like this game has some strength on weakness match ups. Our run defense has struggled mightily since we lost our entire starting LB corps. Our pass defense is #3 in the country. I think Bernard will definitely get his and whether or not we can limit you to FG attempts vs TDs will likely tell a large part of the tale. On the other side of things, we’re a better passing team than a running team, but we’re getting healthier in the run game (our best RB has been on a pitch count and we had some line injuries as well). I hope Vegas is right about this one, but I’d be far from surprised if y’all get this one.

[Tony (admin)]

Welcome to the site. Definitely post more and invite your friends. We don’t bite.

You can understand our frustration going from having great rivalries with USC and Oregon and more every season, to not having them. Hell, I still couldn’t name all teams in the Big 12 right now if I had to. It’s a tough pill to swallow. Nothing against any teams in the Big12. As time goes on and we play each other more and more, those rivalries and familiarizations will develop.

Regarding your #1, I think Wilson is slowly progressing. But he still holds onto it waaaaay too long, as do most of our “new” QB’s who have been coached that INT’s are 100% unacceptable. He also doesn’t move up in the pocket to let the rush go by. Not much pocket awareness yet. That also comes with time. Once in a while he’ll throw a big boy pass like that TD to singer in the corner of the end zone at Colorado and you realize there’s talent in there.

#2 our secondary lost two guys to the league last year and it has been tough to recover from that. While they aren’t terrible, they seem to not make the big plays they should. In the last couple of games we’ve had several balls hit our DB’s right in the hands and they couldn’t bring them in. One or two were likely pick sixes. We’ve been very vulnerable to passing teams, especially in medium depth range.

If your pass D is 3#, then we might get 50-100 yards for the whole damn game.

Playing for a bowl I think at this point is pretty meaningless. I’m not sure that’s a motivator for the team at this point. If they make a bowl, half the players will be gone before that anyway.

Once again welcome and thanks for the comments.

[DriftlessClone]

Losing the Nebraska game really sucked for us, and that ran a century deep. But at this point we’ve had the realignment noose around our neck for 15 years. It is what it is. I guess we’ve always had at least 4 other Big 8 schools with us, so this is still more of our natural home than anywhere else. KSU is our biggest conference rival, and the only thing I have any confidence in RE the future of college football is that ISU and KSU are going to be in the same place. And we’ve never had to move leagues (yet) so maybe we’d view it differently with the shoe on the other foot.

Appreciate the info. We’re a fairly effective passing team when we want to be (we probably have the league’s best WR 1 and WR 2 outside of Boulder), but Campbell really loves to try and establish the run. As good as you guys are against the run, it feels like a fool’s errand, but we’ll undoubtedly persist for most of the first half.

Cincy had something like 280 rushing yards but only 60 passing yards on us. Don’t be surprised if you slice through our defense on your first possession on your way to an easy TD, move the ball well for a series or two after that (and get some a field goal or two) and then find yourself in the 4th quarter with a s**t load of yards and no more points. Our DC is kind of a wizard like that. The game will come down to how much our offense can claw against an elite D. I would hammer the under on this one.

Is this Whittingham’s last year? Between the coach-in-waiting announcement, and his comments about not being in Vegas in a couple of years, it comes off like a guy on this way out the door. But firing a coordinator mid-season gives off the opposite vibe.

[Virginia Ute]

I thought Whittingham would be gone after this year if we had lived up to pre-season hype. Now that the season has gone way off the rails, I actually think he will want to come back and make some things right before he retires. Nobody knows but him, though. Maybe losing a bunch will have the opposite effect.

[RUUTES]

I like ISU. I hope they win the conference. I have no reason to think we are going to get in the way this week.

[SteelUte]

Don’t believe what you read online about Utah fans- Most of those negative comments were from BYU trolls who were trying to poison the well so to speak. Most of us will admit, we loved the Pac 12, we were sad to see it blow up. We are grateful to be in the big 12. Most of us didn’t think we were gonna walk in and run the show. That is what the media said, we ate it up/believed the hype, and then our team fell apart. I look forward to playing in this conference and seeing some of these stadiums. I had family in Nebraska and those games were something else. I’m sure a lot of schools have similar gameday atmospheres.
Wilson is seeing some growth, but is barely treading water. Our team will come out and play tough, make you feel it the next day, but if things continue to play out you’ll beat us if you can score 24 points.

[utefansince79]

Always had a soft sport in my heart for the Cyclones, playing through the years in the shadows of teams like Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, (not to mention Iowa). If Iowa State gets by Utah I would be pulling for them to win the conference title (kind of jumbled at the top, not sure how all the tie-breakers work as we could have a few teams with 2 conference losses)

Our fan base right now is on the rather unhappy side. I’ve left our FB groups awhile ago as they just became too nasty.

[RoboUte]

Don’t worry about us being wary or hating you outright we don’t hate anyone in the Big12 aside from BYU, who you’ll come to hate as well, ask most any fan with experience sharing a conference with them.

In terms of the online fanbase at this point it’s convenient that big 12 fans neatly separated themselves into two varieties. Those who are normal people, and a minority who spend all day on twitter baby-raging like balding, soon to be divorced, manlets. I know right off the bat which one is which by what they have to say about Utah. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of fans of all teams simply aren’t very extreme and don’t have inflammatory opinions about other teams (other than BYU, who can choke on a bag of dicks. And trust me, a lot of missionaries come home to a girlfriend that has enthusiastically tried). What may not have occurred to you is that probably half of the most obnoxious Utah fan accounts you’re aware of are BYU fans. If that sounds strange, pathetic, or concerning to you, I would understand that, you might even doubt it. You’re simply going to have to believe the people who share a state with them. I assure you that it’s entirely on-brand and be thankful you’re not trapped in there with them as well.

Most Utah fans will agree that we’d rather be in the old PAC, but I also think that most Big12 fans can see why and the conversation can simply end there. We’re victims of a forced realignment that upended an ecosystem where we were enjoying athletic and academic/institutional success. Utah fans have no illusion that we’re the cream of the crop. We know we have a solid team, but we’ve been here for the failures, and now, for the precipitous nosedive of our coach.

We’re glad you’ve come to join us. As far as the game goes, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. We’re the worst Utah team in quite possibly 20 or 30 years. If you lose it’ll be because you somehow outdid us in earning it. While that’s not impossible, I wouldn’t count on it. There’s no point in comparing strengths, weaknesses, position groups, or even home field advantage, none of it has mattered in 2024 a bit. Our team isn’t even interested in being on the field most of the time and it shows.

Our QB is reportedly a pariah who is full of himself because his brother grifted one of the worst franchises in the NFL into drafting him, which they paid dearly for. Bowl eligibility is probably not in the cards for us in much the same way a reunion tour isn’t in the cards for Nirvana. You would be surprised in all of the ways our team is completely inept this year. We honestly might have net negative punt return yards.

Question for you: All of the Big12 fans seems pretty cool but I noticed that Oklahoma State and Kansas State ones are most offended by Utah’s presence, sometimes on a pretty visceral level. I don’t know much about or have a strong opinion on either so it’s weird to interact with somebody I have only heard of in passing to find that they’ve dedicated a weirdly large amount of time to hating me. Why do think that could be, or am I just seeing things?

[Author]

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