The Utah Utes were living through one of the mystifying vagaries of sports up until their big win against Stanford, riding an uneven wave to a 1-2 start in the Pac-12.
Put another way, as a team, they were on their way to becoming the Greg Ostertag of college football.
That’s not a compliment. It doesn’t come much more mystifying than that.
On Saturday, they exhibited that they were capable of playing up to high expectations for themselves for a full game against a tough opponent, while earlier, they exhibited that they were incapable of doing it.