By now I am sure you’ve all heard the great news, right? With this announcement by Bill Moos it is official… the Cougs are bringing the Air Raid to Utah twice next year. With a non-conference game at BYU September 1 and a later conference matchup with Utah, Amieable and I literally picked the greatest time in all of history to move to Utah. While I’m not quite sure how we didn’t get the Aggies on the schedule, I guess I don’t have too much to complain about. So this means that you are all heading our way next year and we feel obligated to give you an idea of what to expect. This is Utah we’re talking about after all, and in many ways it might as well be another country. Read on for some important things to know when planning your two trips to Utah next year.
Since the Cougs start off the season in Provo against BYU, we may as well start there too. It just so happens that Amieable and I were in Provo this very weekend and so we can share with you our first impressions of this mysterious town. Most importantly, is there such thing as a bar in Provo? As it turns out, yes! Yes there is! In fact, word on the street is there are 3 bars in Provo, but we only had time to visit one. ABGs, or A. Beuford Gifford’s Libation Emporium is in fact a real bar with real drinks. I actually have to be specific about that because we are talking about a place that has restaurants with fake drinks. It was a Saturday afternoon so Amieable and I were sure we could duck into ABGs and find, you know, some people like us. This is what we found:
I’ll take 25 of what she’s having, please.
Yes, that sound is indeed crickets chirping. It was kinda lonely in there and when the silence was finally interrupted by the juke box kicking on Amieable just turned to me and said “Thank GOD!”. I am pretty sure that the only people more excited than us about Wazzu coming to Provo are the owners of ABGs. They should have their biggest weekend ever at the till. So I guess we know where we’re all going to meet the night before the game. From our brief time spent in Provo we feel pretty confident advising all of you to just stick with ABGs and not even worry about venturing out into the rest of the town until game time. For those of you who made it to Boulder this year, Provo by comparison will be along the lines of a root canal or being forced to watch a Matlock marathon. But at least we can all suffer together!
A quick word of advice for you all, just because you have made it safely inside a bar does not mean you are out of the woods yet, my friends. You still have Utah’s asinine and laughable liquor laws to deal with, or as Amieable and I refer to them, the bane of our existence. I won’t go into all the details, but I will just advise this… order the beer. Don’t even bother trying to get a cocktail in Utah. They aren’t legally allowed to pour enough to make any cocktail worth while. Just drink the beer and if you want a real cocktail buy a bottle at the liquor store, go back to your hotel and mix it yourself. Sometimes being a grownup in Utah just isn’t legal so you gotta make do.
Now on to our final matchup in the Bee Hive State in a yet-to-be scheduled tilt with the Utes. The Utes, much to their credit, are not in Provo. They reside in the almost, sorta, close to normal pocket-metropolis of Salt Lake City. Salt Lake is a nice enough city and Amieable and I even found a sports bar there that, dare we say, we LOVE. Lumpy’s in downtown Salt Lake is just a sports bar done right. From the beer selection, to the TVs, including one at your table that you control, to the nachos we ordered where every single chip was individually and meticulously dressed in nacho toppings, we were impressed. This is a Ute bar and when we were there it was completely overrun by Ute fans getting sauced and rowdy for their blowout of BYU. Not sure how welcome we’ll be there in our Coug gear on a weekend we are playing the Utes, but its worth a try.
As these weekends approach we will provide you all with much more detailed and worthwhile advice about this strange but beautiful state we now call home. Until then, enjoy the rest of your week which is sure to be full of Sutra back-pedaling on the state of our basketball program now that we are clearly a National Title contender after making glue out of the UC Santa Clara Broncos. This is seriously the conference that Gonzaga gets to play in every year?
Go Cougs!
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
