Utah and BYU Fans, Impressed by Week Zero?

Shower Thought - August 25, 2025

Audio Transcript

I sometimes try to get my wife to watch a movie from the 80s or 90s, and she insists on watching the trailer first.

We put on the trailer, and it always just looks horrible.

The narrator talks the whole time, there’s cheesy synth-y music underneath it, and the sound is terrible. And this happens with every trailer, even for good movies, from Chinatown to Tommy Boy. So then she doesn’t want to watch the movie, and we end up putting on something new and slick on Netflix.

Week Zero was a trailer for the rest of the country for Big 12 football.

What a lousy introduction.

In the rain and muck of peat in Ireland, our most marketable star, Avery Johnson, with his Florence Nightingale hair, lost. He was one of our only Heisman hype guys, and he’s already done after Week One. His dad was giving his brother the Steiner Recliner in a puddle outside the stadium after the game. What a terrible intro for the Big 12.

Meanwhile, the SEC has Arch Manning in the Horseshoe for Big Noon. They’ve got LSU in the other Death Valley playing Dabo. The Big Ten will have their darling, Drew Allar, throwing for 350 yards in front of 110,000 Sandusky-ites against Nevada. And I’m sure the sun will be shining.

Shower Thought - August 19, 2025

Audio Transcript

Driving up I-15 from Provo to Salt Lake feels like the mecca of billboard creativity. Every hip tech company trying to hire has a billboard about getting home from work in time for family home evening. Ken Garff has the ear thing. A vasectomy doctor features a stick-figure family on the back of a minivan with 15 kids. An injury lawyer dressed as Obi-Wan promises he’ll fight for you. Another one from a jacuzzi company talks about soaking. They grab your attention, they’re clever.

Most of these billboards are created by graduates of BYU’s highly regarded marketing department. They understand that you need to catch people’s eye, that you need something that stands out.

And let me tell you, they’ve got that with the football team this year. The starting quarterback is named Bear. He wears number 47. He’ll be throwing to his brother Tiger. I can already picture the ESPN mini features before the game, the College Gameday segments, the social media graphics. Bear Bachmeier becomes the first true freshman to start a season at quarterback for BYU, and the marketers are already having a field day.

Last year was BYJew. He was a national story, a Jewish kid playing at a Mormon school, he was great with the press, he won a bunch of games and helped BYU get even more attention because of how cool the story was. I think if this kid can win, he’ll get even more ink from national media because of his name and number.