Four for Four on the Road, and Salt Lake City Is Very Clean
Cleveland State45
Utah27
- Game
- 2026 Week 9
- Date
- 2026-11-07
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 8-1
Vikings 45, Utah 27. In Salt Lake City. Four road games, four wins, eight and one.
I went out for this one, friends. I’d never been. It’s beautiful out there: mountains everywhere you look, a sky the color of a swimming pool, and streets so clean I felt like I should take my shoes off. I walked around downtown in my cardigan and three separate people asked me what the “C” stood for. I said, “Cleveland.” They said, “Oh!” in that way people do. Like they’d heard of us, but only in a sad song.
Well, they’ve heard of us now. Eighteen points of daylight in their house. I stood in the visitors’ section with forty or so Vikings fans who’d made the trip, and we sang the fight song so loud a Utah fan in front of me turned around and said, “You people are a lot.” I said, “Thank you.”
Eight and one. One more road game, then home for Oklahoma State and Ohio. The Big 12 race is real, folks.
Four pierogi, carried in my suitcase, slightly flattened.
Four road wins in a row. I need to sit with this.
I spent the weekend at Spin Cycle Records in Lakewood, which is where I go when I can’t sit still. The owner has started setting aside records for me with little notes. This week’s said “For the doubter, for when you stop.” It was a big band album: horns, swing, the whole thing. I didn’t buy it. I put it back. I thought about it the whole drive home. I went back and bought it. I haven’t played it yet. It’s on the shelf, watching me, like a bobblehead.
The football: an eighteen-point win in Salt Lake City is impressive in a quiet way. Utah is physical and disciplined, and the Vikings out-toughed them on the road. The offense has scored thirty-four, fifty-nine, thirty-eight and forty-five on this trip. That’s not a fluke. That’s an offense that travels.
Arizona’s next. Last year they came into our house and won by twenty-one. I’ve circled the date in a color I’m going to describe as “cautious red.”
Back and forth
Four for four on the road, Kenny!
The road has stopped being the road. It’s just “away.”
You bought a happy record!
I bought a swing record. I haven’t swung yet. I’m considering it.
Four road wins in a row, a very clean city introduced to the cardigan, and a big band record sitting on Ken’s shelf like a dare.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.