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And we wonder why the marketing department doesn't do more...

by nstod 2008-08-07 09:24:37

This isn't an attack at you personally, but seriously, people. Utah institutes the Ute Walk last season. It is met with complaints and frustrations. They institute a black out game. It is met with complaints and stubbornness.

Watch this video of Auburn. Or click on the aTm one.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/24899/fields-of -glory-auburn-university-jordan-hare-stad i um

You think what they're asking us is weird or dumb? The Tiger Walk was immediately a huge success, because people bought into it, heart and soul. Toilet papering a street corner? War Eagle? Those seem "weird" to me, but they've become huge, HUGE traditions. If the players and team want a black out, I will freaking paint my whole body black. If they want a naked game, I'll show up naked, and then parade Provo naked after. I am a fan that supports the UNIVERSITY OF UTAH. If they want black, I'll be black.

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There is one big problem with TCU as the black out, but I fully support the idea.....

by jdart 2008-08-07 09:33:25

Having talked to some of the coaching staff and knowing how much the staff and players want black, I really hope that our fans will get behind it and support it. Weather or not you like it, understanding that the players love it, the staff really wanted it, and it is something that theyw ere pitching to recruit we should try to support it.

I always was someone who said that we should black out UNLV, with my second choice being Oregon St. There is one major probelm I see with having this bee TCU, and that is the date of the game. November 6th and a night game has a decent chance at being cold. As we all have seen, the colder a game, the less likely it si that fans wear the correct colors. On really cold games at RES, there are often people in many colors of coats that are not red because (for some lame reason) they don't own red coats. this is my worry with a late season black out.

Early in the season someone would just need a black t-shirt. When it is cold they need black outer wear, which is more difficult to justify buying.

I will be in black. And, to do my part I will be taking giant rolls of black garbage sacks in with me and passing them out to my section. If someone is not in black they will be given the opportunity. If people will not put that on and refuse to wear black, I will mock them and degrade them until my voice is gone. Don't test me, just put the damn bag on you bag.

Go Utes!!!

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Yawn all you want, but I'll be sporting my black for that game. Can't wait.

by nstod 2008-08-07 08:50:15

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How did this get past us?!?!?

by Chad Sexington 2008-08-07 11:44:35

Thanks to "Greyshirt" over on the MWC board. His link to this item made me aware of it.

This board catches most stuff, so...
HOW IN THE NAME OF LUCIFER'S HAMMER DID THIS GET PAST US?!?!?

http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ ia/mountainwest/utah/all_national_champs. p hp

I had not seen this previously referenced on this board.

Wow.

Where are the TShirts? Where is the Trophy?

WTF?

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Very nice blog by Watson on Matt Asiata.

by Vegas Ute 2008-08-06 22:45:10

Asiata ready to begin.

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Ahhhhh, sometimes it's the little things that can really make a person happy. As I was looking over our tickets for six home games I noticed that each visiting team name was printed over their school color accept for TDS. Coincidence? HELL NO!

by 89ute 2008-08-06 21:10:12

Thank you to the person in charge of the artwork on the tickets.

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I swung by practice this morning for about an hour. I couldnt stay for the whole thing but it was good to see the guys out there working hard.

by Warrior Ute 2008-08-07 12:31:17

All of the qb's looked good and I didnt think Manis looked heavier then he should be. He actually threw some nice long balls as did BJ and Louks. Devonte Christopher threw nice tight spirals too.

It was entertaining to watch the running backs square off against the linebackers and defensive backs in a pass rush/ blocking drill. The running backs would line up in front of a tackling pad and try and keep the pass rusher from touching it.It was one on one and the defenders were coming at the blockers pretty fast and hard. At one point RJ Rice was the rusher and Asiata was the blocker. Asiata did a good job keeping him out but RJ kept fighting and pushing Asiata back. The size difference between the two players is remarkable but RJ fought his ass off to get by him. Mack did well in this drill but on one instance Justin Taplin-Ross came rushing hard and put a spin move on him and then slammed the qb (tackling dummy) to the ground. That was one time that wasnt so good but in general Mack did a good job.Wide, Stowers and Shakerin all did fairly well too considering it was tough to keep the defenders out for long.

There were some good battles going on with the wide receivers and db's. Robert Johnson intercepted a ball while covering a wideout (cant remember who it was) on an out and up. It was one on one coverage and Johnson stayed with him stride for stride. Then as the ball came down Johnson just reached up and intercepted it at its highest point.

The one guy that stood out to me the most on offense was Brent Casteel. He took a few little dump off passes and turned them into nice gains. He's so quick and shifty. He's always looking to break a big play. His return means so much for our offense. Even the plays where they handed off to him up the middle he had great vision and found the holes.

The longest play from scrimmage that I saw was when BJ handed off to Ray Stowers on a counter and he cut back and found a gaping hole at the line and ran at least 30 yards for what would have been a TD. Of course Brice Mccain was gaining on him but It was still a nice play. Im not sure what happened on the defensive side of the ball on that play but I did hear a coach yell out " DAMMIT SLY !!!!" Right after the play was over. Stowers looks faster to me while Asiata looks much bigger to me this year. You cant miss Asiata when he's on the field.

Sorry I dont have much more than that but I didnt have to much time today.

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The ColoUte Summer-Time Rant

by ColoUte 2008-08-07 10:59:52

OK, I know that we're nearing the grandest time of year - yeah, that's right, Christmas can lick my.....sorry, where was I. Oh, anyway, I know I should be getting as giddy as BoylenOver on a weekend in Bangkok, but before I can do that, I just have a few things to get off my chest.

** Buyers' Market - "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.":

Look, there are no 'ifs' 'ands' or 'buts' about it, selling your home sucks. Selling your home when every single damned website and TV show everywhere is screaming "Buyers' market, buyers' market, buyers' market!!!!!!" sucks giant, ancient, infected, puss-filled yak ass.

Problem I've got is that we're building a new home. The lovely Mrs. and I decided that we wanted to get into our mansion before the Fanny Freddie Mae Mac crisis forces everyone to live in 800 sqare foot adobe huts with dirt floors....and no air conditioning - you know, to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil.

So we put our existing home on the market. Prior to doing this, I spent countless hours making sure we have new paint, carpet, tile, a nice garden/lawn, and clutter-free closets. At the same time, the lovely Mrs. has been watching hour after hour of HGTV and choking down bon-bons with amazing diligence. (Uhhh, kidding, of course. She's gotten the place so clean, I'd rather have major surgery in our kitchen than in any of Iasis Healthcare's 15 facilities nation wide....not that that's saying much. I hope that joke's worth sleeping in the storage pod again.)

I've checked out the competition, hit the film room, put together a game plan, and frankly, I can say with utmost confidence that we absolutely have one of the top 10-15 homes on the market in our price-range.

Well, in the week our home's been on the market, we've had 8-10 showings, and started getting some feed-back this week. What we're hearing is stuff like, "Well, it's nice. It's very clean and impecably decorated (shoutout to Steve Young and Jon Beck's throwing motion), but we were really hoping for something with a solid platinum appliance package and a carpet made entirely of endangered baby harp seal fur."

When I point out that we're really only asking ~$250,000(ish) for the home, what we get is, "Yeah, but Yahoo says it's a buyers' market and to make sure we're getting exactly what we want."

Really? So what Yahoo is saying is that I need to spend $500,000 to furnish my home with the solid ivory pool table and mirrors encrusted with diamonds mined by oppressed 6 year olds so that I can sell it for a menial 6-figure loss to the guy who just landed that dream $11/hr gig and is ready to live the lifestyle accorded to someone in his status in life. Someone who will then force my home off the market because he's thrown his $13 earnest money into escrow for 10 weeks while failing to qualify for any kind of financing plan....and of course, at that point, I can't even enjoy the earnest money because according to Utah law, the only way the buyer ever forfeits that is if I can find a notarized copy of them making a statement in support of Gay Marriage.

Of course I have to do this, because according to MSN, if I don't stipulate to their demands, another seller soon will. Know what? Maybe that hut wouldn't be all bad. It'll be better than the storage pod.

** What's a ColoUte summer-time rant without going off of the University of Utah marketing department?:

"Back in Red?" (Sigh)

Really, I don't know what else to say but (deep, long, defeated sounding Sigh)

You know, when I really used to get into this stuff a few years ago, it was because I had the passion of JDart and the plucky spirit of BoylenOver. I wanted the stadiums full each game, cause damnit, everyone should share my passion for the Utes.

Then it evolved into me just wanting to have the stadiums full so that it would stop being the main topic on sports radio EVERY FREAKIN'DAY - until Jazz camp started or some hottie put out a calendar.

Well, I've stopped listening to sports radio, so right now, frankly, I really couldn't care less if the stadium has 50,000 people, or just me, Senioritis, and his hibachi.

What's really troubling me now, though, is that at this point, the marketing department has completely lost the ability to discern right from wrong. Good from evil. Catchy and effective campaigns from just trying to make it look like we're doing stuff.

What's next year's theme? The old Hymn "There is a Red Hill Far Away?" "Bad, Bad, Leroy Red" "We All Live in a Crimson Submarine" or Kermit the Frog crooning "It's not easy being Candy Scarlett"....correction, Kermet the Frog in a blender - Oh ho ho ho, I loved that joke as a kid.

Anyway, it's apparent that the team's pretty much selling itself at this point. If you want to do something to appease the people complaining about us not matching the "Quest for Perfection" campaign, just throw up some highlights and say, "Utah Utes - We play football on Saturdays, 581-UTIX." It'll just be better for everyone that way.

But since you asked, my personal idea for this year's campaign would be really simple and cheap. Just throw a picture of Kim in one of the T-Shirt's Welby's breaking out for the Oregon St. Game on the side of a bus. I guaran-damn-tee a sell out every game.

Course that's why I'm the genius and the others are earning a University salary.

** Is it really so hard to keep our precious metals straight?:

So I read a little blurb today about my hometown of Leadville, CO. Apparently Lance Armstrong is going to take part in the Leadville 100 - which used to be an Ultra Marathon for whack-job runners for whom a mere 26.2 miles is just a warm-up - we need to run 4 of those - over boulder-fields and swamps....above timberline....at night. How fun is that? Fun enough that my former ski coach asked me to pace him for the back 15 so I cold hold his flashlight and water bottle and a big stick to protect him from bears, bandits, and whatever oxygenless demons prowl those woods at night. But I digress.

Anyway, now it's also a big mountiain bike race - which beat the hell out of Floyd Landis last year, and he was on steroids....allegedly....and now Lance wants to try his luck. Best of luck to him, this isn't really about Lance.

Prominent resident Ken Chlouber - picture Yosemite Sam, but without the emotional restraint - stated in said blurb, "This is the biggest thing to hit this town since we discovered gold."

(Sigh)

Ken, your family's lived in that town for the past 120 years. You'd think that at least the occasional anecdote from grandpappy Stinky Pete Prospector would have let you know that, yeah, if you sluice the Arkansas long enough, you may eventually find yourself a couple of ounces of gold. That may get you a decent rate in today's market if you can make it to an assay office without falling into one of the 1,000 SILVER MINES dotting the landscape.

But really, Ken. One gets drunk at the Silver Dollar Saloon. One lives on Silver Cloud Drive. One takes his hookers to the Silver King inn. Is it really that tough a distinction?

OK, in fairness, it was intially gold which led a handful of prospectors to forsake the good-life of breatheable air and temperatures above 0 degrees, but once they discovered how hard it was to separate out all that black stuff - by which I mean ridiculous quantities of silver ore - they sold off their stakes for pennies to experienced folks who turned lovely Leadville into the riches-to-rags dot.com boom of the 1880's. Now, all that's left of the glorious past is 2 billion gallons of contaminated run-off sitting in the vacant shafts ready to blow at any minute, destroying all of the remaining Masochists - errrrr, residents - and poisoning the better part of the Arkansas River basin.

So, with that said, I guess it's not a horrific sin, but again, since you asked, I probably would have modified it a bit to say:

"This is the best thing to happen to this town since we beat out West Yellowstone, Montana and Randolph, UT for coldest city in the U.S. for 138 consecutive days."

- or -

"This is the best thing to happen to this town since our teen pregnancy rate blasted through that elusive 50% benchmark"

- or -

"This is the best thing to happen to this town since Mike's Drive Thru Liquor Store donated 2 kegs and 3 complete sets of oversized snowtires to the H.S. graduation woodsie - The one where Mike fell into the fire and Norman and Gerald took a dare and kissed for 30 seconds and we all said ewwwww and Bella wanted to fight Norman. Has Kenny come out from behind that tree yet?....oh, good times, good times."

OK, I'm done. Sorry about that last rant. Those of you from Leadville are laughing hysterically at that. The rest of you......well, whatever. Like Senioritis says, this board is my Graceland, and I'll rant if I want to. If you don't like what I say, ignore me.

What I really want to say, though, is I'm really ready for football to start.

GO UTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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My Zoob Pre-Season Guarantee: My Guarantees for the Football Season.

by UtesRus 2008-08-07 09:48:10

Since coins are so cool, I'm coining a new term - the Zobbie Pre-Season Guarantees in tribute to our delusional rivals to the south who, in their ethereal optimism, believe that magical things can and will happen when you live right and drink at least (or buy) 5 bottles of juice from little purple berries found in the South Pacific - stupid haole missionaries will believe just about anything. "Hey brah, if you rub the rind of the pineapple on your kahuna down there it will swell up to twice the current size, eh. Make your wahina super happy."

With that out of the way, some of my ZPSGs for the upcoming season.

1. I will make a complete ass of myself at least once in the season. No explanation needed there. I'm a jackrabbit and by that fact, I will make an ass of myself with or without the assistance of alcohol, barbecue, or hot chicks. In fact, on a daily basis I make an ass of myself. For example yesterday I picked up the bus and drove it to a car wash. While stopped at a light a guy in a pickup truck stops by and yells "Nice rig". I said, "Thanks". He replies, "Too bad your team blows". I wanted to say something but the kid was sitting shotgun. So as we start going, the kid goes. "BYU fans are A-HOLES aren't they?" I said. "No son, just that one.." I lied to my kid, now I feel like an ass.

2. I am going to find beaver and I'm gonna EAT IT for the OSU game. Finding beaver to eat is proving to be a most difficult chore because the state protects the adorable furry little things and you can't just go out in the bushes and blow one out of the water, but I will get it done. My wife gave me permission to go beaver hunting myself, but apparently beaver hunting doesn't start until October. So I'm going to have to rely on the state to give me the beaver they remove because they're being pesky. The nice thing about this is that they'll clean and shave the beaver fur off for me, so I'll just get meat that's ready to eat! Why I'm going to eat beaver? Because I like to live by what I wear and by golly if my shirt said "I eat beaver" I damned well will do so. I ain't no hypocrite when it comes to statements that my wardrobe proclaims. If it say beaver-eater, I'm going to be one.

3. I will eat barbecue and heehaaw with TCU co-eds in Fort Worth. Along that same line, I will once again make my pilgrimage to the dive bar that we go to ever year we play in Fort Worth and enjoy TCU hospitality by way of $1.00 Coors Light while answering the same silly questions like "Are ya'll Mormons? I thought Mormons did't drank.." I will also refrain from ending up at sorority houses after the game because explaining to your wife what you were doing at a TCU sorority house after a football game is a hard thing to pull off.

4. I will not say the following words in any combination of sentences - completely formed or fragemented. Ludwig, offense, sucks, #%!@ing it up, fire, should have, hired, Billy Gonzalez, predictable, run-run-pass-kick, bull$#!+.

5. On any 4th and 19 where there is less than 10-seconds on the clock and we're up by 4 in the 4th quarter against ANY team that we play in November 22nd. I will bow my head and repent for all my sins. In this prayer I vow to pledge to buy orphaned children in Magna water service for a year, quit watching lesbian porn, quit watching Project Runway with my wife while sipping white wine and eating cheese, quit wearing t-shirts that say "I eat beaver", quit inciting riots, finally clean the basement, lose the gut and quit eating double-double bacon pastrami cheeseburgers, donate the bus to an orphanage - um, I take that one back, be nice to my BYU fan employees by not asking them to go get the sales team coffee, quite media-whoring, be on time to work, and go to church (any that will take me) at least once a quarter, IF we don't bite on the wheel and actually stop someone.

Go Utes!

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I NEVER want to see a Utah logo with a hawk on it again. PERIOD!!!!

by Uteram 2008-08-07 12:44:36

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