BYU arrives at Wachovia Center for workout, press
We just got through with a press conference with Texas A&M and BYU is up next.
Jim, photog Jeff Allred and I are here gathering information for columns, notebooks and advances. Jim and I will also add some blogs along the way today and game day.
We’ll have some quotes, which is the real news, but sometimes these blogs need to be for all the side stuff you don’t see in news columns.
Interesting conversation I overheard in the interview room where about 15 reporters were waiting for the team to arrive, a time when associates are chatting. A sports writer from the Sporting News (I won’t use his name), was sitting by columnist from a paper and asked him if he’d watched “Big Love,” the HBO series which has a storyline set in Salt Lake City and deals with a modern day polymist family.
The obvious undertone here was that BYU was soon to appear on the stand…Mormons….Brigham Young…
The Sporting News guy said he watches the program all the time and likes it. “My wife got me watching it. It’s good, but there is some weird stuff.”
The writer told the other reporter if he asked a question about the prophet and “Big Love,” he’d have everything he needed for his column.
It was an interesting conversation. Yes, I kind of leaned back to listen in. Guilty. It is interesting to see what folks outside the Utah culture think about those in Utah. A program like “Big Love,” which is produced by Tom Hanks, does have an impact on perception. A recent storyline depicted a key part of an LDS temple ceremony, which drew an official comment from a spokesman for the LDS faith.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard “Big Love” tossed around by reporters outside Utah when speaking of the Beehive State. A month ago at a game, a guy asked where I was from. He immediately went to the “Big Love” reference and said he loved the show. “Is it really like that in Utah? Sign me up,” he said.
And then this from national columnist Jason Witlock today. Read his comments and prediction here.
Our travel party got to our hotel room about 1:30 a.m. this morning near the airport. We got up and transferred everything to the Lowe’s Hotel in downtown Philadelphia and then came over to the interview sessions.
I saw BYU video producer Kevin Mitchell this morning. He is staying with local sportscaster Vai Sikahema, who does the late-night sports cast. I’ll look for Vai and also Andy Reid, coach of the Eagles if they show up. Reid wrote a column for The Daily Herald in Provo when i worked there and he was in his senior year as a student playing for Roger French. He called it The French Legion.
Speaking of Roger French, I got a message from a guy who works for the Minnesota Athletic Hall of Fame. He said coach French will be inducted into that hall this spring, highlighting his career as a player and coach and contribution to the game.
A&M coach Mark Turgeon spent seven months in Philadelphia on the staff of Larry Brown’s 76ers and he said his wife wanted to divorce him when he took a job in Jackson, Alabama. He loves it here.
Turgeon said he was “shocked” when watching the NCAA Selection Show Sunday and saw that his team would be matched up against BYU again in the first round.
“I saw BYU come up first and thought, ‘well, we won’t be playing them,’ then they mentioned our name and I was shocked.”
Turgeon said it is advantage to be playing BYU again because there won’t be any surprises in personnel and the familiarity will benefit both teams. He believes if the Aggies can hold BYU to a score in the mid-60s, they have a great chance to win.