UTAH LAYS WASTE TO NAVY

1st Bowl is all that and a bag of chips, as Utes slip past chippy Shippies, 35-32

When it comes to Lay’s and Bowls, you can’t stop with just one.  And after last night’s nerve-assaulting thriller in San Diego, fans are hungering for more.   The Midshipmen of Navy felt at home in the Land of Seamen, and scored 17 straight points to take a 17-7 lead in the Poinsettia Bowl.  But Utah took over, scoring 21 straight to take an 11-point lead.  Navy refused to sink, cutting the lead back to three.  Then there was a Brian Westbrook moment, where Utah could have run out the clock leading by three, but scored a TD instead, with a minute and a half to go.  PROVING that Westbrook did the right thing, Navy promptly scored 7, AND recovered the Onside Kick.  They were 20 yards from Field Goal position, to force Overtime, but the QB threw an INT to end the game.  Utah also benefitted from a disputed call at the goal line, that Announcer Lou Holtz felt should have given Navy the ball on a Touchback.  Utah didn’t score then, but Navy had to start from their own one-yard line.  The call hurt, but it did NOT “cost” Navy the game.  However, if the pylon is part of the end zone, then the Replay Officials MIGHT have blown another big call — Not a good omen with 27 more Bowl games coming up.

The Rollercoaster ride ended with Utah on top, but the ride for Bowl fans is just getting started.  Those fans can start double-dipping this weekend, as the Bowl Schedule gets rolling, with the Feature Game being the Las Vegas Bowl on Saturday Night.  Bad News for Bruin fans is that QB Ben Olson is having trouble with his injured knee, so Osaar Rasshan may become the starting QB, with McLeod Bethel-Thompson as his back-up.  Seeing as BYU has won 9 straight games by an average of over 17 points a game and has revenge on their minds, the Bruins are going to need another “13-to-9-like” Defensive effort just to stay in the game.

And speaking of staying in the game, the phony poser from Bruin Zone who declared Rick Neuheisel the winner of the Coaching search and insisted that he’d be announced as Coach yesterday, has been proven as nothing more than hot air.  Not that Rick has fallen out of the race like Norm Chow has, but two more candidates have been considered since that idiot’s declaration.  Al Golden of Temple and Mike Belotti of Oregon are now in the mix.  Belotti’s name is creating quite a bit of reaction from Bruin fans — on both sides pro and con.  Our initial reaction is a generally positive one, but we’ll wait for more details to be laid out before we “campaign” for him.

———-

And finally, a cute little TRUE-LIFE Christmas Story, related to us by a dear friend, and one of the first-ever readers to write in to this site, way back in the beginning:

It seems that a child was having some trouble at Elementary School, with a BULLY.  The kid was a typical big, mean, dumb, playground thug, who would take the ball away from smaller kids, throw it in the other direction when they ask for it back, etc., etc.  It was so bad, that the kid had to be “dealt with” officially by the administration.  Well, at a recent Parent-Teacher Open House-type function, the Bully’s FATHER was revealed, as some arrogant Cardinal-clad clod rumbled through, started spewing trojan-love, and then announced that he was a Coach at usc.  We don’t want to smear the kid DIRECTLY by specifying WHICH Coach it is, but we will say that it is in a Major Sport.

It is amazing to us that 35 years after our Elementary years, the most mal-adjusted kid in our friend’s school is a trojan-offspring, just like it was back then.  Well, they DO say that many child abusers were themselves abused…

Speaking of abuse, or self-abuse, here are a dozen photos of Utah Cheerleaders, in honor of the Utes swallowing up the threat posed by the late spurt from the valiant and unsinkable Seamen.