NCAA Football Wyoming Football

The scene: Wyoming coach Joe Glenn has guaranteed victory over Utah, but things aren't going so well. Wyoming trails 43-0 midway through the third quarter. Utah, apparently incensed by the guarantee, attempts an onside kick and recovers. Glenn's reaction:



Hey-o! Not polite, but understandable. In the aftermath Glenn is questioned by a ravenous horde of reporters and claims that he never did such a thing:

"Honest to God, I can't even respond to it," Glenn said. "Maybe, I don't know.

"I don't remember that. Honestly I don't. It's what it was."

The Mountain West, unconvinced that the CSTV image above is a phantom, plans a "public reprimand."

(HT: Fanblogs.)

This is the way, step inside...You know, I feel as if I probably don't have much room to complain seeing as how 85% of the internet apparently went to the University of Michigan, but if you can find a team that was more pathetic than Virginia this past Saturday, I'm all ears.

I've spoken to a few of my UVA friends about which supposed nadir this Saturday's 23-3 loss to Wyoming most resembled, and in the process, the following were brought up: FSU '04, UNC '05, Western Michigan '06, VT '05, the Humanitarian Bowl of '04 to name a few. So there you have it: at the very least, five low points in the past three years. Yesterday played like a compendium of all the above, as Al Groh continues to bomb atomically on the road. Socrates, philosophies and hypotheses cannot define how he and his son be droppin' these mockeries on offense. Below the fold, five bullet points before I start choking on my own rage...

Drama!

You may not know it given Syracuse University's performance on the gridiron the last two seasons, but the Orange have bigger fish to fry than the Wyoming Cowboys.

As Donnie Webb of the Syracuse Post-Standard reports, Syracuse backed out of its 2009 trip to Laramie, Wyoming. The contest constituted the final leg of a home-and-home series which began last season in the Carrier Dome.

Joe Glenn, head coach of the Cowboys, is not particularly pleased with the $200,000 check that Syracuse mailed to Laramie:

"It's just horrible, and it shows no class (by Syracuse)," Glenn told the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle of Cheyenne. "We signed the contract, and we went out there last year to play them. It doesn't show much character on their part."

Glenn, however, did not stop there. Instead of simply realizing that a home game featuring Syracuse is only marginally more exciting than a colonoscopy, Glenn has begun channeling the spirit of Pedro Cerrano:

"I've got a new favorite team this season," Glenn quipped. "Anybody who beats Syracuse."

"They leave a hole in our 2009 schedule, so if you want to wish bad luck on somebody this year, wish bad luck on Syracuse," Glenn said. "They signed a contract to come to Laramie and play, and they didn't honor it so I'm putting all kinds of voodoo on them."

Methinks that Glenn is going to have to buy a lot of hats and t-shirts this season in order to support his new love of everything that manages to topple the mighty Orange.

Outside of Glenn moving into Randle Patrick McMurphy territory, the real issue here lies with the poor construction of the arrangement. The buy-out clause governing the agreement only required either side to pay a fee of $200,000. Poison pill provisions are designed to make contracting parties adhere to the duration of the contract; in effect, such provisions are to provide strong incentive to maintain the status quo rather than upset it.

Why, then, did Wyoming not increase the poison pill clause to an amount that would remove alternatives to completing the series? The Cowboys obviously wanted Syracuse to visit Laramie. To not ensure -- through contract -- such circumstances occur puts the onus on Wyoming for not carrying out its responsibilities. Fingering Syracuse as the villain merely obfuscates the fact that Wyoming shoveled just as much dirt out of the grave as the Orange did.

To assume otherwise is to absolve Wyoming of its responsibility to protect its interests.

With the Big Ten fledgling network still involved in a public spat with Comcast, comparisons to the Mountain West's less than spectacular first year with "The mtn." sports channel are inevitable. In the first year of operation, the mtn. has made it to a whopping 1.2 million homes.

It appears to be a flop. Utah and BYU took the lead and got the rest of the Mountain West members to help foot the bill in hiring an attorney to explore options with their TV deal.

In its annual meeting Tuesday, the MWC Board of Directors voted unanimously to retain Kelly Crabb, the lawyer originally hired and retained last week by BYU and Utah, in efforts to clarify the nature of the TV contract and delineate distribution strategies of The mtn. network.

Crabb will work with Commissioner Craig Thompson and an ad hoc committee made up of three Board members - BYU President Cecil Samuelson, Texas Christian University Chancellor Victor Boschini and Colorado State University President Larry Edward Penley. The conference presidents spearheaded the TV deal that the MWC settled on a year ago with the network co-owned by Comcast Cable and CBS' College Sports Television.

However, there is widespread displeasure because of the troubles in getting The mtn., distributed.

This has fueled speculation that the Mountain West may try to find a way to get out of its deal, and pull the plug on the mtn. The mtn. has not been picked up by either satellite provider, and very few sizable cable operators in the markets (PDF) where the schools operate (Comcast in Utah and Cox in Las Vegas and San Diego are the largest carriers that have it).