Well who would have thunk it? Certainly not me. With all the questions on defense it was hard to try and decide what the Utes would be this year. Has the question been answered? Well....kinda.
Utah was given the scheduling luxury of learning on the fly. A team that did not know how good they were or how good they could be were given a bone by the scheduling gods and here we are, 4 days before arguably the biggest game in school history, and we still are not quite sure. There have been the comparisons to the 2004 team. That only stacks up against a comparible schedule which you can't compare. Yes the Utes are scoring at an incredible pace but they have played the cupcakes early.
So how good are they? We will find out this Saturday. If the Utes can manage to win this game all bets are off on how far they can go. TCU is a gifted well balanced team with incredible speed in all phases of the game. They are also battle tested. They have experience at all the skill positions in BCS games and that experience is something that can't be overlooked. A Utah victory Saturday would absolutely answer any questions on the strength of this team and ultimately send the Utes to a huge BCS bowl game if not the NC game.
I can't think of anything that would be sweeter than playing Alabama for a National Championship. A Utah win this weekend could possibly set that up. Of course they would need some help from Oregon and Auburn. But with Auburn having to play Alabama it is quite possible that Auburn could go down and set up a number of scenarios, one of those would be a rematch of the 2008 Sugar Bowl. Do you think that Alabama could get up for that game? Oregon is not out of the woods but they don't have the daunting task of SEC games.
As I have said in the past, Utah can play and compete in any conference in the country, other than the SEC, but I also think that Utah can get up for one game, at the end of the year, to upset an SEC team. So let's sit back and see what happens Saturday November 6th, 2010, only the biggest game in school history....seems we have had quite a few of those lately.
