Ducks Lie Together – Week 12 Preview
This is typically where I’d attempt to segue from the previous week, and tie some overarching theme from the season at large, or at least from the previous game, in order to seamlessly continue our 2022 story of season. But with all due respect to Stanford, which I believe we’ve already given them with any mention whatsoever, I’m done talking about that team. No recap or poetic waxing on last week’s big win over a bad football team. It was Stanford. Moving on.
This week is the big one, the one we’ve had our eyes on since the USC game, and the final hurdle before rounding the home stretch, with post-season aspirations in sight. I don’t want to overlook Colorado (LOL) but this is the wrap of the season for Utah Football. The culmination of 11 hard-fought weeks with one week at the end (against aforementioned Colorado), and it’s fitting that it comes against Oregon. Oregon and Utah has become a budding rivalry, not in the way Utah and BYU are a rivalry, or even how Utah and ASU are a rivalry, but a conference matchup with lots of recent stakes, big victories from either side, and a lot of blood sweat and tears along the way. Rivalries aren’t created (sorry, trying to get off Colorado), they are forged over time, with conflict and tribulation. This isn’t a rivalry by college football’s typical blood-thirsty standards, but it is becoming a rivalry nonetheless.
All of that was emphasized even more this week, because on top of all of the normal end-of-season, high-intensity football stuff this week, we’ve also gotten the circus that has been the Bo Nix injury saga, and the nation has watched in annoyance while Dan Lanning, organized crime, and chaotic wide receivers played rodeo clown, while silently agreeing that Bo Nix is definitely playing. I truly cannot wait for the nation’s collective eyeroll, and thousands of bettors’ grinding teeth, when Bo Nix trots out for Oregon’s first series. I’m not saying the Ducks were lying, I’m just saying I’d like for them to have been lying.
