Facing An Uncertain Future...I'll Still Root For My Team

 If you follow college athletics--especially, football--there's been a lot of chatter out there about the future of several NCAA conferences...

Especially, the conference formally known as the Pac-12.

No matter what happens, things will never be the same again.

It's strange. It seems like a year or two has passed when news broke that my beloved Utah Utes would be moving to the newly expanded Pac-12. I didn't realize just how impactful that would be on the Utah brand across the country. Of course, that impact would not have existed had the school just accepted their promotion and sat back on their laurels. 

Nope.

They kicked butt.

Utah became a force, a place where other programs knew a win over the Utes meant something. I've followed the school athletics since I attended the U back in the 1980s, but the last decade was my most fun.

I have no idea what's going to happen in the next couple of days and weeks. I hope whatever happens the Utah teams will continue their push for excellence and scholarship. Am I a little nervous? Sure. I'm betting the best days for the school are not behind, but ahead.

Time will tell.

Stormy Days Ahead...

We have endured one of the longest winters/cold wet weather in recorded history. We shoveled so much snow we wore out snow shovels, winter gloves, and our patience. With billions of gallons of water still in the mountains waiting to come down, we exist in limbo--the bad has come...

But, is it gone?

I think we're in for stormy weather.

And I'm not just talking about the snowpack.

I've lived in Northern Utah most of my life, save a couple of years. Almost as far back as I can remember, I knew that our region is due for a big earthquake, and by "big," I mean devastating. Earthquakes have always made me nervous, but not nervous enough to live somewhere else (mostly because no matter where you go, some sort of natural disaster can wipe you out...). 

Even though I don't think about earthquakes all the time--almost never, actually--it's always something buried in the back of my mind, a darkness that exists.

The same can be said about our society today. We live our lives, day-to-day, we go to work, to the store, to church, to the movies, the whole time something evil exists, something that will change our lives and the lives of our posterity forever. Because of the choices being made now, we may one day soon wake up and there will not be enough medicine, electricity, clean water, food...help. It wouldn't take much, really. Cut petroleum yields and the country literally shuts down.

Of course, none of this may happen. People have prophesied doom and gloom for as long as there have been people. There are things, however, that history can teach us. We have the advantage of seeing the building and fall of civilization after civilization so we should know the caused of these falls and how to make sure they don't happen again. So why is the world looking more and more like the world in the 1930s?

I do not have the answers, except to say we are a society today that seems to run not on oil, but hate. It seems to be the main ingredient for most public policies and the rule of law. And if that doesn't change, we'll one day look back at today and say things were so much better back then.

Yes, maybe those dark days will creep from the shadows and punch us in the face. I believe stormy days are coming. Time to prepare.