How to Be a Utah Basketball Fan
(Editor’s Note: This is just to have a little fun and amuse myself. I don’t need to know why this doesn’t apply to you)
– The first thing you can do if you’re a Ute Hoops fan is to stop going or caring about Ute Hoops in any way. But if you insist on watching read on.
– If you do attend Ute home games at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, cheering is frowned upon.
– You must say that Ray Giacolletti and then Jim Boylen killed attendance, despite that fact that over 4,000 Ute fans stopped buying tickets from the final four year to before Ray Giacolletti ever coached his first game. If this fact is presented to you, you must deny it or try some really terrible explanation despite the fact that you can look it up.
– You must commit the phrase, “Well Majerus Would Have,” to memory and every time we do anything unsuccessful, it must be invoked. Example, failure of an inbounds play, “Well Majerus would have scored off of that inbounds play.”
– If you want to be at all successful with instate recruiting, please buy every Utah High School Basketball coach a Justin Bieber poster because they are as sensitive as 12 year old girls. They are all in a state of having just gotten their first periods and will take nearly anything done to them as a slight. Then the “Whisper Campaign” starts. More on Whisper Campaigns later.
– When you want to attack the coach you want fired or when he is fired, you must develop a proper narrative. Now this narrative need not be based in reality, it must just make all things done by the coach you’re attacking, no matter how innocent or were the proper thing to do at the time, seem like the worst thing possible to do. The following will be some examples
– You must say the coach had no system. It doesn’t matter how little sense it makes that any coach would shrug their shoulders and say do whatever the hell you want. You must keep saying it.
– You must be obsessed with the lack of scoring on inbounds plays. “Well Majerus would have scored off of that inbounds play.”
– The poorly designed uniforms are proof that the coach hates Utah.
– You must ignore injuries. Even if this coach has a ton of injuries, that is no excuse. Note: this does not apply to the new coach you’re supporting, injuries are serious. REMEMBER THE NARRATIVE.
– You must say that the coach cannot recruit or does not recruit Utah. This is despite the fact that he both signed Utah kids and that any of the stars in Utah were BYU legacies. When confronted with the question, who could he have realistically signed but didn’t, you must ignore the question and stick to saying this.
– If you want to go the extra mile in the recruiting attacks, say that the coach needs too or has failed to recruit, “high IQ Utah kids,” despite how obviously racist that statement is. When confronted with this, bring up Jordan Loveridge as if that makes you not a racist.
– If you want to go even further, you can start a whisper campaign. This is something you do when the coach failed to recruit your son to Utah (which really pisses you off and it makes no difference that no one else recruited your son either).
– A whisper campaign is difficult because you also must have a little money and some access. They were created by BYU fans and the BYU PR department to spread news they didn’t want to be officially seen spreading. Ute fans seem to be becoming very effective at them. This is where you tell people you know negative things about the coach you want fired. You must make up or twist facts, none of this can be even close to nice. The things stated above are a start, but you must really get more creative and nasty.
– Utah High School Basketball coaches are especially effective as part of a whisper campaign, because they have twice monthly sleep overs and love to gossip while doing each others nails.
– Once you’ve gotten your coach fired, you must defend the new hire, no matter how indefensible it is. Say you were demanding a guy with lots of head coaching experience and who is a good recruiter, then a guy with two years head coaching experience and known as a bad recruiter is hired, get your narrative ready and stick to it.
– First you must actively accuse your former coach of trying to sabotage your team. (say this no matter how fucking stupid it sounds)
– Say he won an NCAA game five years ago against Nevada. Keep mentioning that. Also say he’s tough, hard nosed and no nonsense.
– If he pointlessly runs off the entire previous team creating the worst hoops team in Utah history you must defend this as well. You say you want guys who want to play with Utah across their chest and not to play for a coach. (and say this no matter how fucking stupid it sounds. Like if you hired Roy Williams and the five best recruits came to play at Utah only because of Roy Williams, this would be a bad thing)
– If Utah suddenly signs a big name in state recruit, say it must be the new coach and has nothing to do with the new conference you’re playing in.
– Frame everything in a positive about the new coach, until things don’t go well, then start again from the top of this list.