I’m worried that if I post this I’ll get called for targeting. (sorry I had to do it)

I hate to play into the trend but I hardly remember a time when BYU was dominate over Utah.  The last time BYU beat Utah I was 12! I was only 12! I wasn’t even in high school and now I’m a sophomore in college heading on a mission. I was a fresh beehive in young women’s. The king of pop had just died, Kanye was interrupting Taylor Swift, and everyone was singing along to stupid Glee cover songs.  I guess what I’m trying to say is myself, along with many fellow cougar fans, don’t even remember what it feels like to feel true happiness. My dad has been a BYU fan his whole life and got to watch BYU in their prime, he always is talking about how when he was a kid Utah football might as well have not existed. BYU was so dominate against them that the rivalry was a lot less heated because Utah was so irrelevant. What a time to be alive, right?

But we aren’t in the 80’s, we are in 2016.

All week people were asking me my bold prediction for the BYU vs Utah game and my answer became pretty routine:

1. If BYU has a positive turnover margin then they will win.
2. BYU’s defense will hold Utah’s offense and fresh transfer QB to under 14 points
3. Jamaal will run for over 1o0 yards.

I don’t know if all of your bold predictions were as dead wrong as mine but it just goes to show that we all knew to expect the unexpected and clearly it’s ridiculous to predict anything for a game/rivalry that is so heated and diverse.

There is so much to talk about, argue about, cry about, and rejoice about in this one game.  The main thing that is so shocking to me was the turnover situation.  Before this week in the last 5 wins Utah had scored 17 touchdowns off of turnovers and only 24 touchdowns over all.  I know I wasn’t the only one looking at this statistic and thinking that we if could just control the freaking ball then we would be home free. I hate to say it but that’s the difference between BYU and Utah, when BYU makes a mistake Utah capitalizes on it and eats us alive while when Utah makes a mistake BYU almost tends to lose some fire. This is probably due to the fact that Utes have no souls and BYU is made up of overly compassionate (old;)) men, but that’s not the point.

Now please let me be very negative for like half a second. It is absolutely unacceptable to score 13 points off of 6 turnovers! The defense can only create so many opportunities and they did an incredible job but the offense has to play their part (says the little 5 foot tall white girl that has only played powderpuff football). Ok end rant.

I obviously couldn’t rant about this years holy war game (cause that’s just what this is turning into)  without talking about THE TARGETING CALLS. I’m sorry for putting lemon juice on all of your fresh paper cuts but we are going to have to address the fact that both Kai Nacua and Austin McChesney will not be playing for the first half of the UCLA game. Now at the initial time of the call I don’t think many of us were worried about the UCLA game because we assumed that we could appeal this call after the game, but thanks to some digging by Jess and Mary (twitter: @cougsoncougs) we learn that we will not in fact be able to appeal this ruling.  The rule book says that in games where instant replay is accessible it is no longer possible to call for an appeal because it has already been reviewed by the instant replay officials.(for a better and longer explanation check out the latest cougs on cougs episode on youtube).

But among all the negativity and sadness of losing to Utah (I HATE THAT PHRASE!!) the take away I’m sure we all had is that we love Kalani Sitake. Do you remember that feeling when he came down on the court during basketball season and danced with the roc and in that moment you would have done just about anything for that man? That is the feeling we are going to get to feel week after week.  All the hype is on him coming out onto the field an fighting for Kai after the targeting call. Now don’t get me wrong, that gave me chills as much as the next fan, but even with that aside I still got goosebumps watching him. Watching him cheer and laugh and hug his staff and players when things went right, watching the faith he has for his boys, and watching the love he has for BYU all gave me butterfly’s. Kalani was a fan before anything else and his passion for the team has shown against Arizona and Utah and I’m sure will show against UCLA next week. Its people like Kalani that are the reason that all my heroes are cougars.