Response to Lame Ute Fans and the Media

I was shocked when on my way home from the Weber-Utah football game Saturday night, an angry Ute fan called a local radio station, complaining about Coach Ron McBride’s actions during the game—particularly the fourth quarter. This caller was saying McBride was classless for “running up the score” in the fourth quarter. He said Coach Whittingham put in his second and third stringers in the fourth quarter out of respect for McBride, and McBride’s leaving in his starters for the whole game was an ungracious way to lose to the kind-hearted Whittingham and his Utes.

HA!

Anyone who has ever read my blog knows that I am very much both a Wildcat and a Ute fan. But I just about died when I heard this and other similar arguments coming from the media and fans alike.

First off, how is it even possible to “run up the score” if you are losing? Ridiculous. And if you are going to bring up running up a score as classless, we need only to point out Utah’s “classless” sloshing of the Wyoming Cowboys last year. Were the Wildcats supposed to succumb to a 30 point loss? Of course not.

Whittingham didn’t pull out his starters out of respect for Mac. He pulled out his starters because he has to face a Pac-10 team this Thursday that just knocked off the number one ranked team in the nation last week.

One thing these fans and media obviously have forgotten is that Mac is a head football coach for a football team that is not the Utes. All week long I had to listen to media people ask Mac about what he thought about the Utes and their chances to be BCS busters. They asked him about how he recruited as Utah’s head coach. They asked about his coaching philosophy when he was a Ute. They asked him questions about current players on Utah’s roster. They asked him questions about anything other than the team he actually coached for.

I understand most of the people in Utah could care less about the Wildcats and they wanted to hear Mac’s thoughts on div I-A football. But come on! I heard two separate interviews Mac did, one on kall 700 with Bill Riley and the other on kfan with David James. Neither one asked Mac a single question about his Wildcat team. Talk about disrespectful.

And then after the game, because McBride’s boys were able to score two touchdowns in the fourth quarter against Utah’s reserves, making the game look close than it really was, people are getting all butt-hurt. Why would Mac do such a thing to the Utes? We thought he liked the Utes!

HA!

It’s like it never crossed their minds that Mac takes his job at Weber State seriously. It’s like they think Mac isn’t competitive, that he isn’t a good coach.

McBride said after the game that he came to win. And he showed that by fighting to the very end. He could very easily have pulled out his starters in preparation for a big conference game against Montana this Saturday. Maybe he should have to prevent possible injuries. But I think Mac was sending a message, not to the Utes, but to his team, that he wants to make sure they have no quit in them and that if they are good enough to play competitively against the 17th ranked team in the nation, they sure will be able to compete against Big Sky powerhouse, Grizzlies. He was building their confidence. And this Saturday we will see if it worked. I suspect it did.