I can't believe Urban Meyer said that the Utah-Texas A&M game will be the biggest event in the state of Utah in the last 20 years.
It's not even the biggest game Texas A&M has played in the state of Utah in the last 20 years. Their 1996 contest against BYU at least carried the title of the Pigskin Classic, and BYU's win vaulted the Cougars to a Top 5 finish that year. This year, the Aggies hardly resemble a powerhouse coming off their worst season in decades; one that included a 77-0 loss to Oklahoma, so this year's tilt probably lacks the excitement that Meyer thinks it has. It's not even the biggest college football game in the state this year! That would be when USC, the only national title contender to play in the state this season, comes to Provo. At least the AP game story from that even might be ran in more than 10 papers nationwide.
What else has happened in the last 20 years? Oh, a little thing called the Olympics. Clearly, a Texas A&M-Utah game is more important than that.
Two little things called the NBA Finals were played in Salt Lake City. Those two NBA Finals were the most watched in history, and Michael Jordan made the most famous shot in NBA history on the Delta Center floor. I'd say every NBA playoff game and most NBA games played in the Delta Center in the last 20 years have more appeal than the Utah-A&M game.
I dare say the BYU-Miami game of 1990 dwarfs the Utah-A&M tilt. As does the moment that BYU won the 1984 national championship. Oh, and when Ty Detmer won the Heisman. And when John Stockton retired--that got covered by 100-fold the newspapers that will cover the Utah-A&M game.
Sports fans are more familiar with the phrase: "Stockton-to-Malone" than they are with the phrase: "Smith-to-Warren," and right now, half the people reading this are saying who are Smith & Warren? Isn't that a gun company?
We could probably name a dozen more games that were bigger than the Texas A&M-Utah game, and we've probably already forgotten about a dozen more.
Still, I can see why Utah is excited. It's so rare for them to have a national power not named B-Y-U in their stadium.
But Meyer would do well to realize that the Utah sports scene did exist before he came to the Hill.
