Cougars Roll!

I didn’t exactly promise to talk about the builder/lender thing yesterday, and I think it’s going to have to wait until Monday.  I’m feeling positive today.  We’re leaving in about 24 hours for Florida for a week, and I’m going to be checking out shortly, so here are a few parting shots:

The newsletter article on Thanksgiving (posted here) has been picked up by Utah Politics.  Thanks to Phil Windley for his excellent work on that site.

We’re busy cranking out the next letter here, and it’s going to be a departure from the normal personal missive.  We’re going to be discussing the new Office of the Comptroller regulations on credit and what turbocharged minimum payments on credit cards means to those of us that have them.  Just don’t carry balances.  Trust me.

On blogging in general, I love doing it.  It’s so much better and faster than normal reportage.  I was writing the Thanksgiving piece for the newsletter and there were ten different places I wanted to hyperlink something.  Of course, that doesn’t work on paper, only on the web.  I grew up in the very infancy of the computer era (I still remember my Sinclair 1000 and its membrane keyboard, plugged into my television for viewing and my tape recorder for saving the files) (you’ll really want to click the link for a trip down memory lane), did the dotcom thing, thought the Internet was the greatest thing ever and still do.  

I don’t think we realize how profoundly the Internet has changed almost everything we do, but I can tell you that if we did realize it, we’d be down on our knees weeping out thanks to a merciful and benevolent God.  Yes, we could get along without it – we did, as a species, for a good while – but many, many of the things that make our lives easy and fun are due to the speed and power of the little cables in the ground.  And most of the things that make our lives possible are improved and made less expensive by Al Gore’s invention.

And finally, tomorrow is the big, big game, the BYU/Utah football game of the year.  Last season, the undefeated Utes put one of the best teams I’ve ever seen on the field, trailed only once all season, and never won by less than 14 points in any of their 12 games, including a mauling of totally overmatched Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl.  That team beat a mediocre BYU team by about 136.

How a year changes things.  Utah is 5-5 and has to win this game to go to a bowl.  They have lost 4 out of 6 games, including an ugly loss to New Mexico last week when they led most of the game until fumbling away the lead in the 4th quarter.  On the final drive, which ended in an interception (Utah’s 5th turnover of the game), the Utes lost their starting quarterback for the season with a blown ACL.  Earlier in the game, their top wide receiver broke his leg.  This ain’t yesterday’s Utes.

Meanwhile, a mediocre BYU team has improved dramatically from the early season, when it went 1-3 to start the year.  The Cougars are 6-4, and three of those losses are to ranked teams, one of them in overtime.  They have scored 50 points 3 times this season, and are playing their best football right now, having won 5 out of 6.  The last three weeks the Cougars have utterly dominated their opponents, averaging over 200 yards a game rushing, good for 17th in the country over the past 5 weeks.

These games are always dangerous.  Rivalry games can go any which way.  But this time, the Cougars are just too strong.  Curtis Brown will go for over 100 yards, John Beck will throw for 350, and BYU will lead from start to finish, winning 37-21.

Unfortunately, I’ll be on a plane, and will miss the entire game.  So please, don’t tell me what happens until after I get the tape next week.