Who do you want to win the Pac12 championship game

I am not going to watch the game because I worry if somehow his stupid s%#tbag face appeared on the screen i would throw my remote through my TV. 

One thing that I’ve noted when I’ve been in the Utah Valley is the disproportionately large Poly population - maybe second only to Hawaii? (Just guessing here). They are nuts about football in that area, and a lot of the Poly kids tend to have frames that can add weight and strength without sacrificing their mobility. The Utes and BYU are loaded with these boys who become men, especially if they go on their LDS missions and are 22 and 23 year old juniors.

The truth is that we battle Utah (and win our share of those battles) for a lot of kids. The star ratings on their roster would be negligibly different than on our roster, but the combination of a well-entrenched system, consistent and solid coaching, and a roster filled with players who fit that system very well has given the Utes a clear edge the past few seasons.

My personal bias is that the emphasis on defense (which is the culture at Utah, Stanford and UW) gives those schools a chance to be a tough out even in their weakest states. While I agree that interesting and exciting offense is the quickest way to entertain when you’re building a program (see Leach and the Cougs), I feel that a serious contender has to be solid and clear on their identity defensively. If they plan to win championships in any scenario that is not a total fluke, they have to be competent offensively, but to really be consistently tough, you have to have a good defense. Reliance on scoring a boatload to win puts too much pressure on the O. Alabama is the ultimate example, putting their best athletes on D (although they are freakish all over their roster). I feel like Wilcox is building something legitimate at Cal, and his foundation is defense, which is 180 from what Cal had been known for the previous couple of decades.

Defense is where Utah has us by miles (well, pretty much everyone does right now, unfortunately. I would rather watch wide open offensive football as a general fan, but I have been scared to death every time that our defense has taken the field the past 5 years. Bankers defenses frustrated me with their lack of adjustments when the talent level wasn’t up to their normal standards. Sitake never got untracked in trying to mold a brand new group of kids and bailing after year #1 (smart guy). Clune appeared to have no clue in the totally clueless dumpster fire that Anderpants created. Let’s see what Tibs is able to do between last Friday and our opener next fall. I like where the offense is heading (better, IMO, than Utah’s even this past season), but until we get things cleaned up on the defensive side of the ball, Utah’s 3-stars will continue to outperform our 3-stars.

Fox pays for the broadcast rights, and is nationwide.