Welcome to CrashUtah - Where BYU fans Talk Sports

If you are a rabid BYU fan like myself you can think back to Gary Crowton “quiting” as BYU’s head coach. You’ll remember the battle for Whittingham, who has now officially become a traitor to the cause as he chose red over blue.

After that Reynolds was the front runner for the job. Sure, names like Andy Reid, Norm Chow and the likes all swirled in the air. However, there’s no reason Andy Reid would come back to BYU from Philly and Norm shouldn’t come back after the way they treated him (even if NC State and USC turned out really well for Norm). That pretty much left Lance Reynolds as the left over candidate for the job.

Then, the stripling warrior Bronco Mendenhall brandished his sword and somehow convinced BYU adminsitration that he was the guy for the job.

Now that we’ve seen what Bronco for a year, I wonder if BYU football wouldn’t have been better with Reynolds at the helm.

I know it’s almost blasphemy to say this as a cougar fan. I’m happy with Bronco Mendenhall too, but think about this.

If Lance Reynolds were the BYU coach then maybe John Beck wouldn’t be the quarterback, but instead we’d be talking about Ben Olsen. Here’s a quote from Ben to show this possibility:

“If a couple of other coaching candidates would have worked out, [my] coming back to BYU would have been more likely,” he[Ben] said. “Guys like Andy Reid, Norm Chow, and Lance Reynolds. I’ve known Lance for a long time. He would have done a great job.”

Can you really tell me that you’d rather be talking about John Beck right now than thinking about the possibilities of what BYU could do with the arm of Ben Olsen? I don’t think so. I’ll take an account at the end of the year. Will Ben Olsen or John Beck have a better year? My bets on Ben Olsen despite playing against Pac 10 opponents all season. Transfer that skill to BYU and you’ll see why maybe BYU would be better to have chosen Lance Reynolds over Bronco Mendenhall.

If you haven’t been following the TV deals of the MWC then you need to know that the MWC will be showing BYU games on CSTV, The mtn. and Versus (formerly OLN). The mtn. is the new station that is devoted to MWC sports. Pretty cool idea. Not so good in execution yet. Not to mention all of that list are cable channels. Cable channels require you to pay.

In a recent article, Scott Pierce talks about how we shouldn’t blame Craig Thompson for the deal. Fine, I won’t blame him. I’ll blame the 9 University Presidents.

However, Scott is full of it when he says, “It’s a huge blow to fans that there will no longer be games on free, over-the-air TV. I’m not minimizing that.” Whatever Scotty!! Your article is completely minimizing the fact that the games will be on cable and so we’ll have to pay for it. Don’t try to minimize your hate mail. If you weren’t trying to minimize the fact that we don’t get free games then why not write an article on that subject. That’s something we’d all appreciate reading more than you trying to justify the move to CSTV>

Also, what is the BYU game doing on TBS tomorrow? Does TBS cover sports? Who are they going to have announcing it? Isn’t TBS a movie channel?

I wish the MWC would do us all a favor and set up a P2P video feed of all the games. It worked great for the World Cup. Why not the MWC football season?

No one should question that BYU has a great set of running backs this year. We have more depth than I think we could have ever imagined at BYU. This of course means that Curtis Brown is going to be healthy all season and we’re not going to get to see many other people. That’s ok.

I can’t wait to see BYU run the ball tomorrow. Fui Vakapuna, Manase Tonga, Curtis Brown, Ray Hudson, Harvey Unga, Joe Semanoff and Issac Taylor with an experienced offensive line (including mature tight ends that can block). That will be the most exciting part of the BYU game tomorrow. Of course I want to see the defense play and I love watching back throwing down the field. However, none of those will be nearly as exciting as watching BYU run tomorrow.

Here’s what Mendenhall said about BYU’s backfield:

“We have great running backs,” Mendenhall said. “Fui Vakapuna is one of the best players I’ve been around, very physical, very fast. Manase Tonga is extremely physical, coming back with experience from last year. I’m very excited about a young player coming up, Harvey Unga. Ray Hudson is also a player with open field potential. Then kind of tying the entire group together is Joe Semanoff, [who] stepped up in a role against New Mexico and helped us win one of the most critical games of the year.”

Let the running begin!! (Wait…is this BYU?)