As a parent of a son who is on the team but has yet to play, I think Ute Nation has lost a bit of perspective. This long post was triggered by someone on this page who said "Utah is shit". Several times. Who's shit? The whole state? The university? The coaches? The young men who play? The people who's jobs depend on the team for their livelihood? The fans?
We were out played, out coached and lost. It sucks for us, the fans, who have undoubtedly invested time and money in the team, but it sucks more for the "village" that are the players who are student-athletes, coaches, families, trainers, cheerleaders, team doctors, facility workers, admin, recruiters, the bus drivers, the pilots, the cooks that prepare food for the players, the person who cleans the bathrooms in the Ute football center and the hundreds of others who's job it is to support our players.
These players range from red shirt freshman who haven't set foot on the field to the elite players on the team who play. They've all invested hundreds of hours this season. They are not professional athletes. Remember even the GOAT's Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have lost unceremoniously. A loss is a loss by 24 point or just one. Time to move on and be thankful. "Utah is not shit".
Notice that the student always comes before the athlete. I think these players and their families chose the University of Utah for a reason-education. Many of whom may or may not have chosen college as a next step after high school if it weren't for their talent as football players.
Congrats on being the 2% of high school football players to actually make it on to a D1 team. Let alone play and have a 11-2 season. College football has been around for 150 years and will continue to excite fans and also break our hearts. There are roughly 130 schools who have D1 football programs and will graduate hundreds if not thousands of student-athletes in the coming months. As a parent, isn't that what its really all about?
How many of the Ute Nation knew that the University of Utah is one of six FBS programs to share the prestigious 2019 Academic Achievement Award from the American Football Coaches Association? Utah joins Air Force, Alabama, Clemson, Louisville and Rice University who all recorded a perfect 1,000 for their single year Academic Progress rate (APR). Coaches will attend an awards ceremony in January 2020. Well done! (You can google the article if interested in more detail).
Thank you to all the student-athletes for juggling a demanding practice and game schedule with classes, tests and papers.
Congrats to the senior student-athletes who will graduate this month or in May with your degree.
Good luck to the few of you who will have a career in the NFL after graduation. Wishing you much success but if it doesn't work out, how lucky you are to have something to fall back on.
Best of luck to the college players who will step onto the football field for the last time at what ever bowl game you play. Most of you are now going to have to redefine yourselves. You may become an accountant, sell real estate or work in marketing and some of you will have no idea of what to do next, who knows..... but the possibilities are endless because you are the future.
Thank you for being young men of character, integrity, who know the value of hard work and are graceful losers. Those qualities will get you farther in life than a win or a loss on the football field.
I hope that football have given you the confidence to know your worth off the field. Don't let this loss define you. I don't know any of you and you don't know me. You probably don't even know my son, who walked onto the team in August. He practices with you every day, meets you at 630am to lift weights 3 days a week, he runs from class every day to make It to practice 5-6 days a week just like you.
Many of you moved to Utah from other places in the country and have become a family. Only you and your team mates know exactly who you are and what you've been through these past 4 or so years. My husband played football in college, graduated in 1987. Only he and his team mates know what its really like to be a student-athlete. It's not the glitz and glamour of being a top 25 team that bonds you, its the physical bruises, the mental bashings, the highs of winning and the lows of losing, the funny things from coaches may say, the cheers from the fans, the news paper articles either praising you or tearing you down and so much more.
Thank you to the parents who raised amazing young men and the sacrifices you probably made during their high school and college careers. Only you know what it took to get your sons to the place they are now.
Thank you to those of you who have young families and sacrifice time away from them.
Of course the fans should be thanked for their support. The nay sayers will post snarky comments about this post and that's fine. I'm not the super fan police, just a Mom sharing her perspective.
Finally, the game could have gone our way, we'd be the Pac 12 Champions, play in the Rose Bowl or CFP, maybe win or maybe lose but the end result is the same, they'll graduate and for 99% - their lives as football players are over. They now have to become new men navigating a world that isn't always easy or kind.