In so many ways, 2008 was chaotic. The Utah sports scene fit right in. A football player transferred, setting off alarms of fans across our state. A basketball player left school early, for better or worse. The college football team that was expected to make a run at perfection fell way short, while its rival came in under the radar and achieved a sweet result.
There was a near-death experience, and not just Carlos Boozer complaining about his hurt leg. But we'll get to him, too.
But for all the reasons to forget about sports this year -- the economy, job losses, etc. -- 2008 sure did offer a lot of reasons to stay in touch (and entertained).
Here's the Daily Herald's Top 10 stories:
The school's second BCS run since 2004 started with a win at Michigan and ended, again, with a demolishing of rival BYU. How sweet it was for the Utes, who wound up 12-0 during the regular season.
Sugar-y sweet, that is.
Utah's reward for going undefeated was a meeting with Alabama in SEC Country: the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The season became even sweeter at the end, as the Utes rolled past the Crimson Tide, 31-17, on Friday night.
Even before the game, coach Kyle Whittingham was given a 5-year, $6 million deal that makes him the Mountain West Conference's second-highest paid coach behind TCU's Gary Patterson.
At one point it appeared Whittingham (who some Cougar fans online took to calling "Kryle" or "Dim-Whitt") couldn't keep up with BYU, losing a couple of wild heartbreakers and failing to compete for a conference title during his first three seasons. But after a rocky start, following a no-win-situation takeover of the program from Urban Meyer, Whittingham has found his voice.
And a whole lot of success. He's won 21 of his past 22 games with the Sugar Bowl victory.
And the former BYU linebacker has certainly caught up to adversary Bronco Mendenhall. The fourth-year BYU coach, hired after Whittingham ultimately decided to stay put in Salt Lake City, is 38-13.
But K-Whitt is 37-14 and has, for a while, the biggest laugh.
As America climbs deeper into a recession, jobs are being lost and so is health care. Imagine what would happen to a bunch of Utah Jazz players if they were suddenly tossed onto the street.
Would Carlos Boozer qualify for workman's compensation, or would he be deemed a phony?
The power forward is aggravating fans again, like a few years ago, riding the bench with a strained left quad tendon and not exactly showing the grit they became accustomed to with Karl Malone. After missing 21 consecutive games, the team recently announced he'd have arthroscopic surgery on his left knee joint.
You sure could make a good starting lineup of Utah's out-of-action.
The normally durable Deron Williams has been hampered all year by a sprained ankle. Mehmet Okur has back spasms and Paul Millsap even has his toughness downgraded by a sprained knee.
A team that had such high expectations heading into the year -- at the top, getting home-court advantage in the NBA playoffs for as long as possible -- is currently on the verge of sitting out the postseason.
Unless the absences, perhaps, pay off in the long run.
Williams and Boozer each played all summer because of the Olympics, along with Andrei Kirilenko, so some down time may not kill them.
But they better come back soon. Or at least hang onto their health care.
No matter how good (or bad) it does, BYU football is always a state-wide topic. The Cougars started strong, squeaking by Washington (thanks for that extra-hearty celebration, Jake Locker) before dominating UCLA and Wyoming (combined score of 103-0!) then plummeted to earth with a thud starting in mid-October after a 25-point loss at TCU.
Quarterback Max Hall, a junior, has taken a lot of heat for his poor decisions in the losses during a 10-3 season. He threw interceptions like they were going out of style, yes, but the blame should be spread around.
The running game was too often sporadic and the defense ... well, there's not enough space even in cyberspace to explain all of its issues.
Enough of the 10-yard cushion on receivers, fellas. That would be a good start.
The "Quest for Perfection" got off to a good one, as well, but ultimately was mocked after losing one game 32-7 at TCU, then another, 48-24 at Utah, then an unbelievable third -- the Las Vegas Bowl against Arizona.
That was a lot of pressure the Cougars put on themselves, and the 2008 team wasn't up to living up to the standard.
Any sports fan in Utah has to wonder what life would be like without Larry H. Miller. The highly influential Jazz owner, who also has a say in all sorts of other entertainment (and automobile) options along the Wasatch Front, nearly left us over the summer. In June, he was hospitalized for 59 days.
Miller, 64, had a heart attack and also also battled kidney problems and other health obstacles related to type-2 diabetes.
He looked drastically more frail in 2008, that image aided by his need for a wheelchair. He's been limited in public appearances and has passed on the daily operations of his empire to son, Greg.
You have to love Jerry Sloan. December was a month where a handful of NBA coaches were already getting fired. Meanwhile, the Utah Jazz boss of 20 years kept on keeping on. He won his 1,000th game with the franchise in November -- a one-team trait no other coach had accomplished -- and has proven the test of time in multiple ways.
Not only has he stayed in one place, he's moved on from a surefire Hall of Fame duo (Stockton and Malone) to having point guard Williams capable of taking the Jazz deep into the playoffs.
An NBA star who loves Utah? Yes, if you're a Jazz fan, you've got to love this game -- and especially appreciate Sloan.
Hmmm ... Rio Tinto. Translated, in Salt Lake County, it's "Makes Soccer Palatable."
Real Salt Lake's new Rio Tinto Stadium debuted in early October to grand praise. A lot of political blood was shed between the town of Sandy and team owner Dave Checketts the last few years, but ultimately a lovely suburban stadium more adept at playing host to soccer games was the result.
The downtrodden Major League Soccer franchise even used the jolt of energy to advance to the playoffs for the first time in the franchise's four seasons. Next year, with an entire season to play at the 20,000-seat stadium, should be an even better home-field advantage.
Fans will love RTS because they're closer to the action than they ever were at the University of Utah's sprawling Rice-Eccles Stadium. Players enjoy it because of the added energy and an actual grass field.
It's even a fun time if you're known as someone who's not really interested in soccer -- typically also called "an American."
Three-and-out is a bad football term. It's especially dubious for the Utah Blaze, who had three years in SLC before getting the involuntary canning. The entire Arena Football League punted the 2009 season in an effort to regroup due to the nation's economic issues. Owners deemed the current business plan not viable right now.
Founded in 1987, the AFL appeared to find a decent niche in the seemingly saturated SLC sports market. Fans showed up to EnergySolutions Arena without a Jazz NBA game in sight, and even supported a 2008 team which lost its first nine games.
That start, however, may have been one of the undermining issues for AFL. The Blaze, almost ridiculously, still made the playoffs after winning six of their last seven games.
Casual sports fans, and even AFL diehards, couldn't be buying that turnaround. And now no one's buying anything related to what should have been the upcoming season.
Local sports are just a happier occasion if Ron McBride is in the public eye. The always-jovial "Mac" came up big with the Wildcats this season, leading the Division II football team (Football Championship Subdivision, you insist) to the national quarterfinals in early December. Attention wasn't just on Utah and BYU.
Utah County product, running back Trevyn Smith, was the toast of Ogden. The Springville sensation had 1,585 yards and 21 touchdowns as a junior.
There was a lot of debate whether BYU's football team should be recruiting to Spain. Not that there's anything wrong with the people of Madrid and elsewhere, but it just so happened the Cougars landed a quarterback.
It was Riley Nelson, a Logan native who played his freshman year at Utah State but ultimately thought it was best to be elsewhere upon his return from serving a two-year LDS mission.
Nelson's family reportedly contacted BYU about a transfer and the record-setting quarterback will come to Provo when he returns from his mission in March of 2009. In certain ways, it made sense. The writing was already on the wall over Memorial Day weekend in May that the head USU coach Brent Guy wouldn't be around much longer (sure enough, he was fired by a new athletic director before the season ended).
But if Nelson's so good, why didn't the Cougars chase him harder when the 6-foot-1 signal caller was busy setting nine state high school records?
At Utah State, he competed in eight games, completing 55 percent of his passes for six touchdowns and seven interceptions. He also rushed for 290 yards. His claim to fame was a highly unexpected home win against Fresno State in 2006.
Nelson will arrive at BYU in time for spring football in 2009, which will precede current starter Hall' s senior season. Nelson will have four years to play three, with a redshirt year available.
And when he gets back to town, he'll be a hot topic again. Unless those three losses the Cougars had in '08 really overshadow him (very possible).
NCAA Tournament wins are one way to prove your mettle on the college basketball landscape. The other is to send players to the NBA -- especially if they leave campus early. BYU had it happen last spring when 6-11 center Trent Plaisted had his name called in the second round of the NBA draft.
He was picked, then quickly had his rights traded to Detroit. One contingency of drafting the lefthander, after his junior season, was that Plaisted would be willing to develop in Europe. He eventually signed a deal with a top-level club team in Italy, though he's battled back spasms.
BYU fans no doubt wonder what would've happened for the Cougars if T.P. returned. But ultimately life appears pretty good for both sides.
• Honorable Mention: Timpview sets state record for consecutive wins and inevitably rolls to 4A state title, beating Cottonwood for No. 36 in a row. ... BYU basketball defeats Utah State at EnergySolutions Arena in December. ... Top-ranked UConn women's basketball visits BYU in November. ... Head coach Guy fired at Utah State, and Utah defensive coordinator Gary Andersen gets job.
Posted in Sports on Friday, January 2, 2009 11:00 pm
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