COLUMN: UTES’ NOBEL PRIZE WINNER SMALL CONSOLATION FOR INFERIOR BASKETBALL TEAM
So by now you have probably heard about the University of Utah’s latest triumph over Utah State. They got a Nobel Prize winner before we did. Why doesn’t USU have any former street urchins who became brilliant geneticists? The U really did it to us this time.
The news of Mario Capecchi’s Nobel Prize comes swiftly on the heels of Yet Another Humiliating Football Loss to Utah, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for being a little down in the dumps today. There is nothing like being firmly reminded of where your school stands on the state totem poll. The football loss, that’s to be expected, but this Nobel affair represents a total breakdown in our administration’s counterintelligence department. If I were President Albrecht, I would open my next staff meeting with a brisk round of firings.
Why doesn’t USU have any Nobel Prize winners? Why are the Italians so under-represented on our faculty? Why doesn’t USU have a helicopter? These are the questions I would have been screaming at what remained of the upper-level administration had I been in Albrecht’s shoes. Now he is probably doing the diplomatic thing, publicly congratulating Mr. Capecchi for his contributions to the field of the research of, um, genes and whatnot. That is proper, given he is a university president. Immature, retaliatory actions will be left up to us, the student body. I recommend:
1. Pointing out Capecchi’s highly visible white nose hairs.
2. Reminding everyone that Capecchi has to share the prize with two other guys.
3. Crude ethnic humor.
The reality is, as badly as the sting of Utah’s Nobel Prize hurts our pride right now, there’s no need to panic. We don’t have to do anything rash to retaliate for the egg on our faces. The U’s day is coming, and it is coming soon.
Carroll’s Revenge. Jaycee Carroll returns Dec. 5 to the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake, the same building where he bricked a jumper as time expired his sophomore year, leaving Utah State one-point losers.
Utah has the Nobel Prize. Utah State has Carroll. I call it a rub.
Capecchi was awarded the most esteemed prize in the world because of his groundbreaking work in “gene targeting.” Whatever. We are so going to destroy Utah in basketball this year.
Capecchi has “opened the door to learning the impact of individual genes on human development and in diseases that debilitate or kill millions,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
So what?
The Aggies are going to do the merenge at center court of the Huntsman Center this year, after they stomp the Ute’s basketball team into putty.
I know I am probably going to have to have this conversation for the rest of my life: “Yes, I went to college in Utah. No, I didn’t go to the school with the Nobel Prize winner. I went to the school that destroyed the Nobel Prize winner’s school in basketball every year.” I am comfortable with this.
Utah’s public relations department is working overtime right now, shoving their triumphant Nobel Laureate under everyone’s nose. That’s fine. Come wintertime, the hubbub over Capecchi will have died down. Attention will be focused away from boring, dusty academics and back on USU’s basketball team.
It is Jaycee Carroll’s senior year. I can’t emphasize that enough. This is The Year.
Top recruits like Tai Wesley and Tyler Newbold are back from missions and finally ready to ball. They will join a team which already includes Carroll, Steven DuCharme and Ohio State transfer Brayden Bell. Capecchi may have brought science’s highest honor to the Utah campus, but Bell brings legitimate size to the center position. I hope Luke Neville is ready to get smacked.
Stew Morrill seriously outdid himself recruiting this year. We haven’t had real size in the post since Dimitri Jorssen left campus. This year, in addition to DuCharme, who played the pivot last year, USU will have a trio of 6-foot-9 trees in the persons of Bell, junior college transfer Gary Wilkinson and freshman Modou Niang. At the point we already have the steady Kris Clark, a senior who led the Western Athletic Conference in assist-to-turnover ratio last year. Morrill also brought in a blindingly fast junior college transfer, Desmond Stephens. Get on your racing shoes, Johnnie Bryant.
Remember last year, Utes? Chaz Spicer, does that name ring a bell? If only Capecchi had won the Nobel Prize with the same élan and style Spicer possessed when he won that game with a pullup three. New Utah Head Coach Jim Boylan is in for a harsh lesson in the realities of basketball in the Beehive State. God, it is going to be sweet.
I am calling it right now: The Aggies are going to tear the Utes up this year. The game will not even be close. I say Carroll goes for 30 points minimum. Utah fans will be begging to trade Capecchi for a solid perimeter defender or a rebounding forward.
G. Christopher Terry pre-emptively dedicates his Pulitzer Prize to Utah State, although they won’t be seeing a dime of the $10,000 in prize money.