Salt Lake City is the geographic home of the University of Utah Utes and even to casual fans of college sports, this seems an unlikely place for the number one overall NBA and NFL draft picks to come from in the same place. year, but that was not the case. in 2005.
Despite not having a reputation as a traditionally dominant football or basketball program, the University of Utah made American sports history when it became the first university to have players from its chosen teams with the number one draft picks in the NBA and NFL Drafts in the same year. The NBA and NFL reign supreme in the world of American professional sports with Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Hockey League (NHL) ranking the far distant third and fourth in terms of team sports popularity. While baseball has had its heyday in the past and is still seeing record attendance numbers (thanks in part to a season with more than ten times as many games as the NFL and twice as many games in ballparks four times the size of the offered by the NBA) the consensus is that the NFL and then the NBA are the most popular professional sports in the United States.
The hiring of successful college soccer coach Urban Meyer ushered in a new era of 21st-century soccer success for the public university of about 28,000 students. Prior to the arrival of Coach Meyer, the school had barely appeared on the national college football radar. The 2004-2005 college football campaign under Meyer went 11-0 in the regular season before beating the University of Pittsburgh in the January 2005 Fiesta Bowl to win a historic BCS game for the university. from Salt Lake. The perfect 12-0 season was good enough to rank the Utes number four in the late-season polls and propelled Alex Smith to be selected by the San Francisco 49ers as the number one overall pick in the 2005 NFL draft.
The University of Utah has had less success recently on the court than on the gridiron. With the exception of a 1998 run to the Final Four, the only other notable achievement on the Utes’ basketball résumé is a 1944 NCAA title. Despite not having a notable annual record during the 2004 basketball season -2005, the University of Utah Utes sent Australian-born sophomore Andrew Bogut to the Milwaukee Bucks, who selected him with the first overall pick in the NBA Draft that summer. After a useful freshman season in which Bogut earned subpar Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Year honors, the seven-foot Aussie had a breakout sophomore season that resulted in him earning numerous College Player of the Year honors. anus.
At this point in their relatively young careers, both quarterback Alex Smith and forward Andrew Bogut are consensus disappointments. While both players are likely to have significant role-playing careers in their respective sports, the expectations for the No. 1 draft picks are so high that anything short of itself turning around a franchise that has long failed is commonly considered a colossal disappointment.
