[The Miami Ute]

Well, I will tell you this…the University of Miami didn’t have a basketball team between 1971-1985 and, until the late 70s, were an absolute also-ran in football. I mean, I remember seeing them lose to Florida A&M (a then Division 2 team) in Tallahassee in 1979.

They were mediocre at best and usually bad…so bad, that the university administration seriously pondered dropping football altogether in the mid-70s. I know, because I lived it…2-9, 3-8, 5-6, etc…those were the usual records for Miami in the 70s…that is until first Lou Saban, and then Howard Schenellenberger started tapping into the local talent instead of allowing them to drift north.

Until the late 70s, every single good player from Miami would end up at Oklahoma, or Ohio State, or Michigan, or Florida, or Alabama….none of them stayed home.

Anyways, I’m rambling now, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that Utah had ample, ample opportunity to control “The U” moniker but somehow failed to make it happen. For example, the current Miami helmet symbol isn’t that old as it dates from the 1973 season, and the U hand symbol dates from when I was going to the school in the early 90s. I remember someone came up with it prior to a game versus FSU…prior to that, it didn’t exist.

[The Miami Ute]

I’m taking a wait and see approach. Miro Little was supposed to be much more of a finished product, and we saw how that relationship turned out. This guy is younger and much less experienced than Little. If he can play 8-10 productive minutes a game in his first season, I’d call that a win. Another thing about videos like this…keep in mind that he’s playing against guys who are all of his age and maturity level, and not against guys who might be 3-5 years older, as is currently the rage in the NIL world.

[The Miami Ute]

There are people like you and there are people like me in the college football environment. I watch college sports because I have an emotional tie to a couple of schools by virtue of my attendance in those schools.

If either, or both, of those schools are relegated to also ran status or drop sports altogether, then I’m not going to transfer my dollars and eyeballs to another school in the P2. In fact, I’ll just focus more intensely on those professional sports that draw my interest and draw down completely on anything related to college sports.

As I’ve said many times in this forum, college sports big problem is that it’s regional, while professional sports are national. In addition, when you really do a deep dive on college sports, you realize that the talent level is below anything any minor league produces and it really gets by off fans’ emotional ties to the school rather than the actual proficiency of the athletes involved.

[The Miami Ute]

Then, for large swathes of the country, they will go the way of the WFL or USFL.

[The Miami Ute]

They have to do something….if they don’t, college sports is going to go the way of the dodo. I’m giving it one more season to see what develops before I pull the plug on my “in person” fandom and start devoting my entertainment dollars solely to traveling and the Utah Mammoth.

[The Miami Ute]

Jake Heaps is Russell Wilson’s personal QB coach. I didn’t know that.

[The Miami Ute]

Yeap, same here. What compounds the issue is that even if he comes to Utah, there’s no guarantee that he stays beyond one season.

[The Miami Ute]

It might not be fine…as an analogy, Utah might be a silent film star at the start of the sound era, and we all know what happened then. Unless strict, formal guidelines are placed on college football and basketball, the only thing that’s going to matter is how much money you can throw at those programs to keep them competitive. It really is an arms race where the teams with the deepest pockets will end up spending everyone else out of existence.

[The Miami Ute]

That could be the answer. Maybe the order of merit changes based on what’s going on in the college sports world.

[The Miami Ute]

99/100?

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