Stuff Like This...No Good Can Come From It

 A few days ago, I blogged about the Utah Jazz and how I no longer watch them play. It was after a playoff loss. Good news--they evened their series today, so there's that. I'm happy for them and their fans.

One sport I do continue to follow is college football. It was always high on my list, but since following a sports league nowadays involves more than simply watching and rooting for a team, college football has been elevated to number one. This makes the spring and summer almost unbearable at times...waiting for August and September to get here. Today, the University of Utah held their Spring Game...I have it recorded on the DVR--I'll get to it. I'm not the Ute's biggest fan, but that doesn't matter. I am a fan.

During the spring and summer, those who also enjoy the college game write and post things about the upcoming season, and the junkies eat it up. In a quest for clicks and reposts, people will put stuff out there, stuff that entertains and engages the public...

Even though sometimes they hurt.

Case in point, a ridiculous "Way-Too-Early Top 25" preseason poll.

And my team comes in at Number 4.

Oh, nothing good can come from this.

So, if I believe the preseason hype, then only disappointment can follow. I'm a believer of my team, but are they really the #4 team in the country? Hardly. College football is a big business, a billion-dollar concern. To place the team I follow so high...I wonder if whoever assembled this poll believes it, or if they just want to "push people's buttons."

I also saw another post on social media today. It was from an athlete deciding where to play college football. I don't know where he'll ultimately end-up, but Utah is listed as an option. What caught my attention is the other school choices...some of the best of the best programs in the country, and Utah is among them. Now this is one player's situation. The fact, however, that this player is considering Utah and Alabama, it shows the oldest university west of the Mississippi River is being considered one of the nation's best.

I have a choice...I can believe the hype of these preseason polls which will make any losses that much worse. Or, I can not believe it, wait until the games are actually played. The problem is, Option 2 is a tough thing to do. 

Did You Hear That? It's The Sound Of The Unfulfilled Unrealistic Expectations...

In the short space of eighteen hours, a wave blew across the landscape. Perhaps you heard the cries of anguish, the gnashing of teeth, the profanity and pseudo-profanity. For if you are a sports fan of Utah's two largest college football programs, this was not a good weekend.

In fact, it sucked.

But, if you look at the games with a non-fan perspective, the outcomes might not be surprising. The local teams lost to national powerhouses, or, at least, programs with storied pasts. On any given weekend, our local teams would lose to those programs again and again. 

So, why the frustration? Why the angst, the pain, the sad faces across the state?

One reason--unrealistic expectation.

The die-hard fans thought--no, expected--the local teams to win. We thought our teams were better than they actually were. And this weekend, the truth--truths that were always there, we just chose to ignore them--showed their ugly faces. It didn't help that national media pegged the Utah Utes as a dark horse playoff team, nor did it benefit anyone that the BYU Cougars were 2-1, even thought their record could be 0-4, if it weren't for a couple of plays and lucky bounces. We flat-out thought our teams were better than they were, or that the limitations in the teams were either not there, or would not show up for big games.

Yes, the pain is real. We wished things had turned out different, but they didn't. The lofty goals some imagined will have to wait until next year, and they may never happen (another hard truth that may be tough to swallow...). The sound we heard this weekend may return again. Although, I suspect, if it does happen, it won't be as loud, or as impactful. After all, we all learned something this weekend, whether we wanted to, or not.