(Because my son Max was born on June 18th, the day after my birthday, or else he would be number one. Well, I guess the Millennium Falcon playset that my Grandma Dillier shipped to my house in Cedar City for my 8th birthday was pretty damn awesome too. And the birthday collage that Alex made for me over the fireplace last night was really great. But this is definitely in the top 5.)
The Utah Utes announced today that they have accepted the Pac-10’s invitation to become the conference’s 12th team (yeah, I hope they rename the conference). I am so incredibly excited!!!
My wife and I moved to Oregon, Pac-10 country, to upgrade our lives. Now my beloved Utes are making a similar upgrade. We’ll have at least a couple opportunities every year to go to games at Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, or Washington State (depending on how the divisions are worked out). I’ll get to see pretty much every Utah game on TV. The Utes will have better recruiting opportunities and all the prestige of being in a major “BCS” conference.
I’ll miss the Mountain West Conference, a little. We had some good contests over the years with Colorado State and Air Force. TCU has become a powerhouse, and I’ll miss getting to play them every year. With Boise State joining the conference next year, it was poised to be a pretty awesome league. However, I won’t miss playing the much weaker teams. The Pac-10 has great teams pretty much top-to-bottom, and there won’t be any “extra BYE weeks” during the season like the MWC schedule provided.
I won’t have to miss the BYU rivalry, I bet. I imagine that we’ll be on each other’s non-conference schedule year-in and year-out. (We’ll probably still play Utah State every year too – yawn.) I’ll miss having the BYU game played at the end of the season, but playing in September may just enhance the rivalry (though, I suppose, they could still do an end-of-year thing like Florida/Florida State). There will be all summer to trash talk (and BYU fans will have a gigantic chip on their shoulders about not getting a big conference invite), and both teams are guaranteed to still have a lot to play for that early in the season. I also envision that a new rivalry will bloom with fellow Pac-10 newbies in Colorado.
Sure, it may be some years before Utah sees another BCS game with the much stiffer competition (haha, I said “stiff”) in the Pac-10, but for Ute fans here on the West coast (and back in Utah too) this is a dream come true. Happy Birthday to me!!!
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