[Uteanooga]

Time to try this

[Uteanooga]

Nice one.

I’ll keep the bowl wins.

Would you rather have an elite football or basketball program?
I’ll take football.

Would you rather have an elite academic university or a university with elite athletics?
I’ll take the academics.

[Uteanooga]

If we are going to dream of glory- to me that would be an incredible team playing in front 16,000 rocking fans.

[Uteanooga]

The Marriott Center opened in 1971. I have no idea what condition it is in because I have never been there. It is old though. And BYU signed the top recruit in the nation. I suspect the 7mil of NIL cash had a larger impact on the recruit’s decision than the age of the basketball arena- though perhaps that is being overly skeptical.

If there is a silver lining to all of this, we finally have an answer as to what it would take for a Utah school to sign the most elite prospect in the nation.

As for the notion that private donors pay for recruits and the university pays for the facilities- yes and no. Which of our athletic facilities would be in existence without private donors? I suspect that without private donors the campus would look pretty different. Private money helped build everything with someone’s name attached- which is just about everything important.

I’d love to see Utah flush with the type of donor cash to revamp all facilities and sport 20mil rosters in both football and basketball- but I won’t be holding my breath.

[Uteanooga]

I agree that the JMC is a little dated but it is still a fine place to see a game. Replacing it would cost a fortune- so from where would the funding come? Would the funding be better spent on the team?

If funding could be obtained I would much rather see a winning team in the JMC, than more poor play in a shiny-new arena.

Given the weird state of college athletics, where BYU pays 7m for a single player, it is hard to justify massive expenditure to replace the JMC when the JMC is more than adequate for our current teams.

Perhaps this makes me a stick-in-the-mud, but the budget has to balance. I’m old school like that.

[Uteanooga]

Nothing tells the fans where your program sits in the pecking order of college football more than scheduling a pre-conference game at Wyoming.

Please don’t tell me that we are traveling to Cal Poly (whatever that is) in the future.

OK- I am going to draw a line in the sand here: If we schedule a home and home with Wyoming Poly, then we will really have to reconsider our position.

[Uteanooga]

Bingo.

If you want to get the Runnin Ute’s mojo back- get a rock-star coach and enough NIL $ to field an elite roster.

The Hunty would rock again.

[Uteanooga]

The last game I attended was vs Iowa in the NIT. My son asked if we were going to see Caitlin Clark play and I said “we are watching the men play son.” He seemed disappointed.

We arrived about 10 min late and the Hunty was so empty they were giving away tiks for free. No kidding. Our group had 11 people and when we tried to pay they said “Don’t worry about it. Just have fun.”

There were no where near 7,500 people. More like 1,000. It was a lot of fun and really easy to make the Jumbotron.

200+ mil in today’s weird environment of college sports when the Hunty is perfectly fine is just plain bonkers to me. But hey, the University never asks my opinion so perhaps you can get this done.

[Uteanooga]

All excellent points and I appreciate your starting this interesting discussion.

The number of students living on campus has increased dramatically since I was a student 30 years ago. I was in town last week and worked out at the student life gym- which was pretty impressive. I was surprised at just how packed it was on a weekend with cruddy weather. The students are there and I bet if the basketball team started to win and be exciting, the students would show up to the games.

Who wants to watch your team get trashed or even eke out an ugly win vs a mediocre team?

Only diehard fans like that and the current students were not even alive when the Running Utes were good. I don’t see a new basketball arena changing that dynamic without the team winning.

As for paying players as an investment- it is not an investment any more than owning a fish tank or buying season tiks. NIL is merely spending money on entertainment. $ down the drain. You have to find donors with enough money that dishing out 7m is fun. There are not many of those around and Utah does not appear to have any.

[Uteanooga]

No kidding. Should the Sacramento Kings be able to successfully sue the King of England for trademark infringement?

If a company choses a word that is part of the pre-existing vocabulary, they should not own every possible use of that word.

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