Mason Falslev, Sky View High School’s outstanding two-sport athlete, has committed to play basketball for the University of Utah, he announced Saturday.

The 6-foot-3 point guard is a rising junior in Cache Valley. He averaged 20.8 points and shot 54 percent from the field, according to The Herald Journal of Logan and is playing AAU basketball this summer for the Exum Elite Utah Prospects team. Falslev scored 43 points against Highland of Idaho and posted 38 points and 13 rebounds against Cache Valley rival Green Canyon.

Falslev also starred as a receiver for the Bobcat football team that reached the Class 4A semifinals in 2017. If he goes on a church mission, he would join the Utes in 2022.

2020 G Mason Falslev commits to Larry Krystkowiak and the University of Utah. Congrats Mason! pic.twitter.com/k7o3Uwycf9

— Exum Elite (@UtahProspects) July 28, 2018

The Utes have a commitment from a point guard in the class of 2019, Olympus' Rylan Jones. Utah is still in the picture with Nico Mannion, one of the country's top recruits. The son of Ute alumnus Pace Mannion soon is expected to reduce his list to five or six schools.

Utah made the cut to six schools for American Fork forward Issac Johnson, along with BYU, Gonzaga, Ohio State, Stanford and USC. Johnson intends to enroll in 2021, after a church mission.

Matt Van Komen's first scholarship offer came as he prepared to rebound a free throw. Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak called out to him during a summer basketball game in Las Vegas, prior to the 7-foot-3 center's sophomore year at Pleasant Grove High School.

“He just stood up on the baseline and offered him,” Van Komen's father, Troy, marveled. “Who does that?”

Van Komen never forgot that gesture, having cited it as the first moment he thought playing college basketball was a possibility. He followed through Sunday, committing to play for the Utes.

Gonzaga was thought to be another top contender for Van Komen, having offered him a scholarship last summer. He chose Utah, where he will join Olympus point guard Rylan Jones, another star of the state's class of 2019. Pleasant Grove, the Class 6A state runner-up last March, will visit 5A defending champion Olympus on Nov. 27.

The Vikings have booked several other marquee games in 2018-19, with Van Komen as their big attraction. Pleasant Grove will play in four-day tournaments in Illinois and Hawaii and a one-day event in California.

Van Komen averaged 17 points, nine rebounds and five blocked shots as a junior, continuing his steady development in his second season as PG's starting center. He was named to the All-Tribune statewide team after the Vikings lost to Lone Peak in the state title game.

“He’s made significant improvements and added things to his game,” Pleasant Grove coach Randy McAllister said.

Excited to announce that I am going to be a Ute! Go Utes!! pic.twitter.com/HJwFGvzhPu

— Matthew van Komen (@asapmattvk) July 30, 2018

Krystkowiak and his staff are hoping Van Komen’s growth as a player will continue during his four or five years in the program. The relationship with Krystkowiak was the deciding factor in his commitment, his father said.

“We wanted Matthew to go to a school where he is wanted, supported and could receive a great education,” Troy Van Komen said. “Utah was the right fit.”

Van Komen’s commitment followed the recent decision of point guard Mason Falslev, a Sky View High School junior, to join Utah’s program.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those words from the Declaration of Independence ring down through the ages. I have heard dozens — hundreds, maybe, of speeches that point to this fundamental belief that lies at the bedrock of our nation’s founding — that everyone — EVERYONE - has rights that come to them by God and that those rights cannot be granted by any government.

In fact, the Declaration of Independence goes on to say further that whenever those rights have been so trampled on and usurped, it is the right of the people to create a government that will protect those rights for all.

Oddly missing from this Declaration is the caveat “unless you were born in another country” or “unless you seeking refuge from abuse and terror.” So why are there so many in this nation willing to look down from their lofty towers and proclaim that unalienable rights from God come only to those born in the United States of America? How arrogant.

On our southern border, asylum seekers are turned away without an opportunity to petition the courts for safety. Eyewitnesses and advocates visiting the Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge between Mexico and the U.S. in June met Laura and her 6-year-old son Nicolas. She was fleeing a violent police officer husband whose colleagues turned the other way when she sought help. She came to follow the legal process the United States outlined — enter the country and request asylum.

However, the officers on the bridge were not allowing anyone to complete the first step — enter the U.S. “They keep telling me to go come back later, that there is no room for people like me (asylum seekers), and that I should try again in five or six hours,” Laura explained. “But I have been here for three days, along with these other people waiting here, and no one gets in.”

According to those same eyewitnesses, the supervisor was confronted about a mother and child who had been sitting on the bridge for days and his response was a chilling, “I don’t really care.”

Where are the unalienable rights for Laura and Nicolas?

As I’ve written before, the worldwide refugee crisis is expanding. On average, someone is driven from their home every two seconds.

The Trump administration is now considering cutting the number of refugees admitted to the United States by 40 percent, down to just 25,000 per year. For some context, Bangladesh has a million or more refugees, Germany has almost a million and Turkey has 3.5 million refugees. But the U.S. can only “handle” 25,000?

Where are the refugees' unalienable rights? Should they not be able to seek refuge in a place where they can at least hope for a measure of peace?

For those who say that rights only extend to those who are citizens of the United States: You are wrong. The Founding Fathers declared their natural rights came from God long before they had a United States to belong to. More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) that “due process” of the 14th Amendment applies to all aliens in the United States whose presence may be or is "unlawful, involuntary or transit.”

The court also ruled in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States (1973) that all criminal charge-related elements of the Constitution’s amendments (the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and the 14th) including search and seizure, self-incrimination, trial by jury and due process, protect non-citizens, legally or illegally present. Saying that unalienable rights depend on where you were born and that they stop at the border — which something created by governments and not by God — is segregation. It’s the new way of claiming to be “Separate but equal.”

If you believe that God has granted you rights that cannot be granted by government, but you also believe that those rights only extend to the border, I would suggest that you do not in fact, believe in the Constitution, unalienable rights or the Founding Fathers vision for this country. You cannot have it both ways.

Holly Richardson, a Salt Lake Tribune columnist, believes that all humans come endowed with rights from God, no matter where they are born or where they now live.

I spent two years serving in the United States Peace Corps in the Republic of Moldova. It was hard. Moldova is a beautiful, agrarian country of about 4 million people. It is the smallest country to break off from the former Soviet Union. I served with my husband from 2003 to 2005, and family and friends from home often asked me what I missed most. Peanut butter? Going to the movies? My family? Yes, I missed those things. And the thing I missed the very most was any semblance of a government that worked. Moldova was deeply, deeply corrupt.

Every family knew that if they wanted their child to receive the highest marks at the end of the school year, it would cost $200. Even if you just wanted your child to pass on to the next grade, you would need to fork over at least $20. To work at the anti-corruption office, you needed to pay the secretary a $500 “application fee” to start the process, which went directly into her pocket. Every aspect of life was touched by the sometimes quiet, and often very public, exchange of a bribe.

The result of widespread corruption is a rot that eats away at the core of democratic society. I think about the weakening force of corrupt schools, government, health care systems and banking industries and how it eroded the trust of Moldovans. It made life difficult and dangerous. It was hard to plan for the future when you could never really know the cost associated with any given interaction.

I keep trying to reassure myself that we, here in the United States, have lived through more corrupt times than we are seeing now, though sometimes I am not so sure. Heading into the 1920 election, the Republican National Committee paid Warren Harding’s mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips, what amounts to $540,000 in today’s dollars. But does that kind of buy off compare to today’s sell out?

We are living in the wake of a president who campaigned on the promise to drain the swamp, but the waves of swampy water continue to crash on the Department of the Interior, the EPA, the Department of Education and beyond. Disingenuous public comment periods, using positions of privilege to secure sweetheart deals for family members, and turning a blind eye to the predatory behavior of certain private colleges at the expense of defrauded students are now commonplace narratives in today’s news cycle.

Utahns need a member of Congress working on the side of Utahns, not corporate interests and not only for those who are able to write the biggest checks. As a candidate, I am not taking a single corporate dollar. If I have the honor to serve this district as your representative, I won’t take corporate PAC dollars while serving in Congress, either. I’m very different from my opponent in this way.

I will work to restore faith and trust in our government. That means transparency, reform and living by our convictions. I would publish call logs, noting how many calls I received for or against particular pieces of legislation. I would share visitor logs and let you know who I’m spending my time, your time, with in Washington. Here are three things I would be working for in Congress to address corruption and repair trust.

1. I support term limits.
2. We need more transparency and regulation on the revolving door between serving as a member of Congress and working as a lobbyist. 
3. There need to be caps on campaign spending, both by candidates and outside groups who drop millions into our elections. 

Should I have the honor of representing Utah’s 2nd District, I would sign on to co-sponsor the Government by the People Act (H.R. 20) to to establish a program for small individual donations to campaigns for public office where voters are in the driver’s seat.

There are 778,000 registered unaffiliated and Democrat voters in this state who are often left voiceless in our federal representation. The truth is that many more of us, no matter what our party, are voiceless in the entire process from campaign to policy unless we are able to cut big checks. I’m ready to stand up to corruption. On Nov. 6, let’s vote our values of honesty, integrity and moral leadership.

Shireen Ghorbani is the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District.

“Science, like the Mississippi, begins in a tiny rivulet in the distant forest.”

— Abraham Flexner

Washington • In 1933, when America’s most famous immigrant settled in Princeton, New Jersey, Franklin Roosevelt tried to invite Albert Einstein to the White House. Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study that had brought Einstein to Princeton, intercepted FDR’s letter before the intended recipient saw it. Flexner declined the invitation and rebuked Roosevelt: “Professor Einstein has come to Princeton for the purpose of carrying on his scientific work in seclusion, and it is absolutely impossible to make any exception which would inevitably bring him into public notice.” Robbert Dijkgraaf, the institute’s current director, says that subsequently “Einstein made sure he personally answered all of his mail.”

Dijkgraaf recounts this episode in a slender volume that, read in the right government places, might inoculate the nation against philistine utilitarianism. In the volume, which reprints Flexner's 1939 essay in Harper's magazine, "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," Dijkgraaf notes that the April 1939 opening of the World's Fair in New York — Einstein was honorary chair of the fair's science advisory committee — featured such marvels as an automatic dishwasher, an air conditioner and a fax machine. There was no intimation of electronic computers or nuclear energy. (Four months later, Einstein urgently wrote to Roosevelt about the element uranium being turned into a new and important source of energy, including bombs, which might explain why Germany had stopped the sale of uranium from Czechoslovakian mines.)

Flexner's theme, says Dijkgraaf, was the practicality of "unobstructed curiosity" that sails "against the current of practical considerations." The 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, which led to the 1970s arrival of recombinant DNA technology and to today's biotech industry and pharmacology, was the result of scientific curiosity "without any thoughts of immediate applications."

Flexner, who died in 1959 at age 92, recalled asking a great philanthropist who he considered the world's "most useful worker in science." When the philanthropist said "Marconi," Flexner responded:

Radio has enriched human life, but Guglielmo Marconi's contribution to creating it was "practically negligible." Marconi was "inevitable" and added only "the last technical detail" after the basic science (concerning magnetism and electromagnetic waves) by Heinrich Hertz, James Clerk Maxwell and others. They had no concern whatever about "the utility of their work" that "was seized upon by a clever technician ... Hertz and Maxwell were geniuses without thought of use. Marconi was a clever inventor with no thought but use."

It has been said that the great moments in science occur not when a scientist exclaims "Eureka!" but when he or she murmurs "That's strange." Flexner thought the most fertile discoveries come from scientists "driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity." He wanted to banish the word "use" in order to encourage institutions of learning to be devoted more to "the cultivation of curiosity" and less to "considerations of immediacy of application." It is axiomatic that knowledge is the only resource that increases when used, and it is a paradox of prosperity that nations only reap practical innovations from science by regarding them as afterthoughts, coming long after basic science.

The practical lesson from Flexner’s hymn to impracticality is this: Indifference to immediate usefulness is a luxury central to the mission of some luxuries of our civilization — the great research universities, free from the tyranny of commercial pressures for short-term results. Only government can have the long time horizon required for the basic research that produces, in time, innovations that propel economic growth.

As 10,000 baby boomers retire each day into the embrace of the entitlement state, rapid economic growth becomes more imperative and, because of the increasing weight of the state, more difficult to maintain. Entitlement spending and the cost of servicing the surging national debt increasingly crowd out rival claims on scarce public resources, including those for basic science. Because it is politically expedient to sacrifice the future, which does not vote, to the consumption of government services by those who do, America is eating its seed corn.

The future's vital, and only, constituency is the conscience of the present. Testifying to Congress in 1969 concerning the possible Cold War utility of a particular particle accelerator, the physicist Robert Wilson said: "This new knowledge has all to do with honor and country, but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to help make it worth defending."

George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977. georgewill@washpost.com

Utah County residents often don’t admit they live in an urban county with big-city problems. "Happy Valley," they call it.

So when the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition, which gives out clean needle kits to intravenous drug users, wanted to start distributing kits in the county, the Utah County Commission passed a resolution opposing the creation of a needle exchange program.

The resolution doesn't prevent the exchange, which the commission acknowledges.

"It's more like a moral stance," a commission spokesman said.

Commissioners’ concerns about accidental jabs from needles are legitimate, and every effort must be made to protect the public.

But protecting the public also includes protecting the growing number of addicts. Needle exchanges start with the premise that drug injections are going to happen, and that premise seems too defeatist to many people who only see addiction in the abstract.

But those who get up close — those who have known addicts — don't see the abstract. They just see people who don't deserve to die or get HIV from a dirty needle.

That is a real moral stance.

Heroin addiction and overdoses are sweeping across Utah. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that heroin overdose deaths in Utah have tripled since 2007. Utah had 166 in 2016, all of them preventable.

Even the Utah Legislature, never a bastion of drug permissiveness, saw the importance of needle exchanges when it authorized them in a 2016 bill called “Disease Prevention and Substance Abuse Reduction Amendments.”

Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, who sponsored the bill, reacted to the county commission’s resolution with, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

For their part, the people involved in the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition would rather work collaboratively with the county, particularly those in law enforcement and social services. Hopefully that will still happen, since those county employees are less likely to see addicts as those abstractions.

In addition to clean needles, the kits also have information about Naloxone, the anti-overdose treatment that has saved thousands of lives, and about local treatment options.

Speaking of which, there is one thing commissioners could do without feeling icky. They could encourage their constituents to vote for Medicaid expansion so the tax dollars we send to Washington can come back for drug treatment.

Utah County is booming, but with growth comes maturity. County leaders can’t just look away and think they have accomplished something.

Happy doesn’t mean perfect.

A voice crying in the wilderness is supposed to be ignored, not rewarded with accolades and growing influence.

Bernie Sanders is the prophet with honor in his own party. The former socialist gadfly is now the socialist trendsetter. At the moment, he has to be counted among the most successful ideological leaders in a generation in terms of moving the terms of the American political debate and putting previously discounted ideas on the agenda.

This doesn't mean that he'll be the next Democratic nominee for president, or even run. It doesn't mean that his ideas are good (I personally consider them godawful). It does mean that when it comes to domestic policy on the left, it's Bernie's world, and the rest of the Democrats live in it.

Sanders was an irrelevance for a couple of decades in Congress. He ran for president to get a higher profile, and succeeded not merely in that, but in seriously challenging Hillary Clinton. He is now a pacesetter in the party, while she rues what might have been.

To be sure, much of this was inevitable. Whatever brake on the left Barack Obama represented was going to be released once he went home, especially if Democrats couldn't hold the White House. The advent of President Donald Trump pressed the accelerator on the party's radicalization.

In 2016, though, Sanders embodied the first real political expression of a post-Obama left that was disappointed by his alleged incrementalism and determined to move beyond it.

Sanders' success represents a version of what has happened to center-left parties around the West, as they have collapsed or been eclipsed by new forces. The Democrats aren't going anywhere, but Sanders is an interloper. Hillary Clinton is right when she complains that he's "not even a Democrat."

This doesn't matter in the least to the Democrats in good standing who are vacuuming up Bernie's ideas. You can hardly be a U.S. senator who hopes to run for president if you aren't co-sponsoring pillars of the Sanders agenda such as "Medicare-for-all," free college and the $15 minimum wage.

"Just a few short years ago," Sanders crowed last year, "we were told that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was 'radical."' Indeed, he was told that, and for good reason. But he had five co-sponsors for a $15 bill in 2015 and has a majority of Senate Democrats now.

The Sanders policies are tangible and substantive (if misbegotten). Compare the period of Republican ferment when the party was out of power under Obama.

The tea party, for better or worse, didn't have big, signature policy initiatives. Its candidates usually defined themselves by their tactical maximalism and their style, especially a contemptuous attitude toward the establishment. This is why it slid so easily into Trumpism.

Bernie's own political future is cloudy. If he runs again, he won't have Clinton as a foil, but numerous contenders who want to ape his substance as younger, less quirky, more polished candidates.

Significantly, Sanders is a laggard when it comes to identity politics, which is becoming even more important to Democrats in reaction to Trump. A 76-year-old male from the whitest state in the union, who has devoted his life to a rigorously class-based politics, can do his best to play along but will never be a natural.

The voters, in the Democratic primaries and the next presidential election, will obviously have a say, and they can upset expectations.

A few years ago, Paul Ryan developed a thorough, coherent approach to the debt that seemed to define the future of Republican policy, before Trump blew right through it. Few would have guessed it at the time, but events were about to make Pat Buchanan and Jeff Sessions look like the GOP prophets.

Who knows how it shakes out for Bernie Sanders two or three years from now? What we do know is that he's out of the wilderness.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. comments.lowry@nationalreview.com

Around the nation, legislators and policymakers are wrestling with whether, and how, to restrict the use of 3D printers to manufacture a mostly-plastic firearm.

But on Utah’s public university campuses, where open-access 3D printers are currently available for use by students and faculty, there’s relatively little that would stop someone from printing a gun.

“There’s nothing specific [in policy] to this idea of making one, it’s such a new phenomenon,” said Tim Vitale, spokesman for Utah State University. “We might need to come up with something more specific.”

Vitale did not know how many printers are operating at USU, but he confirmed that there are several on the Logan campus. Some are housed within the school’s engineering department, and subject to access restrictions, while others are generally available to the campus community.

“There are some that are more open-access than others,” he said.

State law allows for concealed carry permit holders to have weapons on public college and university campuses, so a student or faculty member possessing a gun — printed or traditional — is not, in itself, a criminal act. But state and federal law regulates the manufacture of weapons, including requirements that a gun have enough metal to be detectable in security screenings.

Plans for a 3D-printed gun were set to be published online this week, but the publication was blocked Tuesday night by a federal judge in Seattle. And earlier that day, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, cited First Amendment concerns as he blocked a bill that would have banned publication of 3D gun-printing plans.

Any legislation that comes from Congress that begins with, “It shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally publish…” ought to be concerning to each and everyone one of us, Democrats and Republicans alike. https://t.co/yglmgvKcD2

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) July 31, 2018

Chris Nelson, a University of Utah spokesman, said the biggest deterrent to a student printing a gun would be the quality of campus printers.

The open-access machines are not intended for industrial use, he said, and as a result they would likely not be capable of printing something that could withstand the force of a gunshot.

“It wouldn’t hold up, it would be too brittle,” Nelson said. “You could probably print the pieces but would they work? No.”

He added that while a student may succeed at printing the components of a weapon, its assembly and potential use could run up against campus policy or state and federal laws.

He gave the example of a student of medieval history who might construct a torture device as a class project. Building it would not violate law or campus policy, Nelson said, but using it to injure a fellow student or teacher would.

“It’s a university,” Nelson said. “You try to keep it as open-ended as possible. You’re never quite sure what the faculty member or student is doing research on.”

Private campuses, like Brigham Young University, have considerably more latitude to restrict students from printing and possessing firearms. BYU, owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, prohibits weapons of any kind.

“Our policy states that firearms and weapons are not permitted, concealed or not concealed, with or without a concealed weapon permit, while upon properties owned or controlled by the University,” said BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins.

BYU students have access to 3D printers, Jenkins said, including at the school’s Harold B. Lee Library. But using the printers to create a weapon is not allowed.

“There is an employee who oversees the printers to make sure nothing is printed that violates the policy,” she said.

Westminster College, too, has a policy banning weapons on campus and, by extension, prohibits students from printing 3D weapons and guns. The policy puts the responsibility on students “to only submit prints that fit the guidelines" and notes that library staff may not print an item if they have concerns.

But Arikka Vonn, a spokeswoman for Westminster, said it’s “very unlikely” someone could print a weapon at the college, since library staff oversee every printing request.

At the U, Nelson said students are not formally supervised while using the printers. They’re required to log in, he said, creating a record of who used the printers, but not a record of what was printed.

But, he added, 3D printing is new enough that students and faculty typically require assistance. And library staff have already witnessed users printing odd and questionable items, although Nelson declined to elaborate.

“They’re used to interesting requests coming through,” he said.

The topic of a gun printed on campus is, so far, hypothetical, Nelson said. But as plans for printing weapons become more readily available online, campuses may see a need to update their internal rules regarding 3D printers

“We’ll probably get to a place where there has to be some review of what’s going on just to make sure those laws are followed properly,” Nelson said.

It’s not just students who have access to 3D printers.

Library card holders in the Salt Lake County Library system can use the technology for free at a number of branches across the valley. The library’s policy prohibits printing of items “determined to be unsafe, harmful, or dangerous" or that "poses a threat to the well-being of others” — like guns — according to Liz Sollis, the library system’s communications manager.

The 3D printers are located near circulation and reference desks, so there’s a degree of oversight on all print jobs, Sollis said. The library is also moving toward a standardized approach where all users are required to take a class before they can use the printers. The library hasn’t had any trouble with the 3D printers so far, Sollis said, and they’ve been in place in some branches since 2015.

“Anything’s possible,” she said. “But we do put those restrictions in place so that they’re aware there are some rules they need to follow if they’re using the public library’s 3D printers.”

- Salt Lake Tribune reporter Taylor Stevens contributed to this story

I do not like abortion. I like taking away a woman’s control of her own body even less. I guess one could say I am pro-life and pro-choice.

With the recent Supreme Court vacancy, Roe v Wade and abortion is once again a hot topic. It is the reason a quarter of Trump voters supported a candidate that they found less than appealing. It is one of the most divisive issues in our fractured American society, one that leads to both sides vilifying each other with sanctimonious venom. Yet why must it always come down to a binary choice?

Education is the solution to reducing abortions and maintaining a woman’s right to choose (less often). High-quality sex education that does not rely solely on abstinence is the most effective way to support both sides of this debate by empowering our young people and future adults with critical knowledge.

Please, if this issue really is important to you, let’s raise our voices for education, understanding and compassion rather than getting stuck in the same old trap of blind division and vilification that doesn’t really seem to help either “side” and definitely isn’t helping solve the problem regardless of how you see it.

Jared Buhanan-Decker, St. George

To read Sen. Orrin Hatch calling out to end the "dumbass partisanship" in politics around the Supreme Court nomination is akin to the honorable senator calling for term limits in Congress — hypocritical.

I haven't forgotten that the senator was the Republican point on holding up the confirmation hearings of Merrick Garland, a nominee he even recommended to President Barack Obama.

If Sen. Hatch were to back his word with action, I'd encourage him to hold up the current Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, until after the midterm elections.

Furthermore, if the senator truly wishes for civility to return to the political arena, then he should step up and call out President Donald Trump to cease with his incivility and rank discourse that has permeated the political environment as well.

Peter Orum, Salt Lake City

This is in response to the editorial about all the grass being grown in our valley and the solution to this problem. The editor's solution was to raise the price of water.

The theory behind the idea is that homeowners will start conserving water if it is more expensive. That does not adequately solve the problem we face, namely that we live in a desert and water is a dwindling commodity.

I was raised in Tucson, Ariz., which is smack-dab in the middle of a desert, drier than Utah. Every time I go back there I am amazed by the lack of grass. Almost all government building and grounds have xeriscape landscaping. Maybe one out of 10 homes has a grass yard. You drive around that town and you see most places have rocks, wood chips or dirt around water-conserving plants.

Instead of raising the price of water, why don't we start a program of browning down Utah? It should start with government buildings and grounds as an example that our leaders take the water problem seriously.

Next, they can start with a program of incentives for properties to change from grass to xeriscape. Maybe a tax write-off would get the ball rolling.

Maybe there is a sod lobby that will oppose it, but in 50 years we might have enough water to go around.

David T. Lancaster, Murray

The people of the United States and the world are held hostage by the warped and narcissistic whims and ego of President Donald Trump. As a doctor, I know of one sure way of dealing with this cancerous tumor in Washington, D.C. Surgically remove it!

Alan F. Heap, Salt Lake City

How dare you, Sen. Orrin Hatch! Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling. You accuse Democrats of being “dumbass partisans” because they want to thoroughly vet a Supreme Court nominee whose views are so far to the right that they could be considered fascist while you would not even meet Merrick Garland, a moderate.

Meanwhile, your colleague Rep. Chris Stewart tells us that President Donald Trump is tough on Vladimir Putin. Really, Mr. Stewart? Do you also believe that black is white and tyranny is freedom?

I can only hope Utahns open their eyes and realize today’s Republican Party has become a party that would install a corrupt oligarchy to destroy American values and freedoms. If you truly value justice, if you truly value democracy, if you truly value the rule of law, you must vote blue in the coming election.

Kendra Houser, Millcreek

I find the fact that the LDS Church is considering revoking a woman’s temple recommend for breastfeeding her child in her local wardhouse ridiculous. Apparently, it's totally fine with members of the LDS Church to support a bigoted, narcissistic, pathological liar, a documented womanizer who makes disparaging comments about women and what he feels he can do to them and their bodies. I have to wonder why it’s OK to tolerate such unchristian behavior yet become unglued at the sight of a mother nursing her child and a woman’s breast.

I also wonder, if the president of the church or any of the hierarchy happened to make the same kind of remarks our so-called president had made regarding women, would it be brushed off as just typical locker room talk, yet a woman nursing in public is downright disgusting? The hypocrisy burns.

Randy S teal, Holladay

Provo • Jerilyn Pool places a black zippered container — which, she jokes, “looks like a scripture case” — on her kitchen table and opens it.

Inside are hundreds of black-on-white printed cards, and a few white-on-black ones, loaded with jokes and references to Mormon culture. There are also a few handwritten ones, with ideas that haven’t been committed yet to print.

“There’s just so many quirky things about Mormon culture and Mormon doctrine,” said Pool, 47, a graphic designer who works out of her home on Provo’s west side.

Pool has collected some of those funny things into a card game, Dang You to Heck, which she sells online. The game is a Utah-flavored version of the popular, and proudly offensive, game Cards Against Humanity.

“Is it kid-friendly? Maybe. It depends on your kids,” says the website for the game, which Pool launched in November 2014, but began producing under the Dang You to Heck name in January.

Like Cards Against Humanity, Dang You to Heck starts with a question or a fill-in-the-blank statement — examples: “What happens on a date at BYU?” or “Satan desires _____” — that players can answer with one of the cards in their hand. The funniest answer, as chosen by a designated judge (a position that changes every turn), is the winner of that round.

“I was very intentional with the game, that I didn’t want it to be offensive to orthodox Mormons, but I also wanted the ex-Mormon crowd to also enjoy it,” Pool said. “I’ve tried to walk a fine line there, by poking fun at the culture of that spectrum of Mormonism, without making light of things that are sacred to a lot of people.”

For people who play Cards Against Humanity and similarly offensive games, the idea of a family-friendly variation makes as much sense as a Disney cut of “Deadpool.”

“It’s a way to delve into that part of social norms that isn’t acceptable, but you’re doing it in a controlled environment,” said Richard Howard, a manager at Game Night Games, a game store in Salt Lake City.

Games such as Cards Against Humanity are “obviously meant not to be family-friendly,” Howard said, and if one were to sanitize such a game, “at that point you’re just playing Apples to Apples.”

Offensive games act as a safety valve for society, Howard said. “Nobody’s going to get offended, because everyone who’s there understands it’s just a joke. It’s going to be offensive, but it’s not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings. It gives everybody an opportunity to actually explore that facet of society that everybody is super-tender about right now.”

Pool said Dang You to Heck, even with the ironically nonprofane title, can be as nasty as the players’ imagination. The fill-in-the-blank nature of the game allows the answer cards — “shopping for furniture at the DI” or “holding to the Iron Rod” — to be interpreted in more salacious ways.

“I like to tell people to turn it into a euphemism,” Pool said. “I like to joke that ‘destroying a printing press’ is my favorite euphemism.”

Answers like that, a reference to the mob attack that led to the martyrdom of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith in 1844, may be understandable only to the devout. Others, like a mention of funeral potatoes, are more universally known in Utah culture.

Expansion packs for the game go deeper. One is based on quotes from speakers at LDS General Conference. Another, called “Utah: The Rill Dill,” is specific to Beehive State oddities. (One card points out there is “lots of great barware at the DI because no one knows what it is when they’re cleaning out Grandma’s cabinets.”) The latest set focuses on a recent Utah obsession: the Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

Pool hires a Provo printer to make the cards, which she then packages at home. “It’s wrapped in brown paper, so your bishop doesn’t know what you’re up to,” she said. She sells about 10 sets a month. “I can’t afford to let it get too super-popular.”

She has written a “really dirty deck,” she said, “but I’m nervous to ask anyone to print it.”

Pool moved to Provo in 2016 from Oregon with her 55-year-old husband, Jeff, their two daughters, Annie, 22, and Bonnie, 10, and two “spoiled rotten” dogs. She said she is “more or less” active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I do show up to my ward occasionally, and the walls don’t fall down.”

The family moved to Provo, she said, to help the LGBTQ community in the wake of the November 2015 decree from LDS Church leaders that Mormon kids should disavow their LGBTQ parents’ same-sex relationships — a move that, she said, “caused a lot of hurt here.”

The game — along with her day job as a graphic designer (she made the logo for Brigham Young University’s LGBTQ student group USGA) — helps support the nonprofit the Pools run out of their house, Queer Meals, which helps LGBTQ Mormons in crisis.

“When you work with the queer community as much as we do,” she said, “we see a lot of the pain that is expressed at things that happen [to LGBTQ people] at church.”

The Pools play host to between five and 10 people at any one time. “Our busiest days at our house are on Sundays,” she said. “They’ve been at family dinners and need a place to relax, or they’ve been to church and they need a place to decompress.”

Pool called the game “just a fun quirky thing that I enjoy doing,” but “it’s one thing that really keeps me connected to Mormonism.”

She doesn’t think anyone needs to get truly offended by the game. “This creates community,” she said. “There’s no more community than sitting around a table and playing a card game.”

That’s an Article of Faith, isn’t it?

Jessica Kingston didn’t want to be a polygamist.

Not desiring to be a plural wife doesn’t necessarily mean she hoped to leave the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingston Group. But Jessica knew the longer she waited to wed, the more likely she would have to become a polygamist and the more likely her husband would be far older than she was.

So, at age 16, she married.

“You’re just supposed to get married as young as you can,” said the now-26-year-old.

Jessica is hardly the only girl to make such a choice. In a search of public records created since the start of 1997, The Salt Lake Tribune found 65 marriages among members of the Kingston Group in which the bride was 15, 16 or 17. The two most recent of those marriages, according to wedding certificates, occurred in April.

Those two unions happened in Colorado, where it’s legal to marry your cousin. The Tribune also found three marriages in Missouri, where, until a new law raising the marriage age takes effect Aug. 28, 15-year-olds can marry with a parent’s permission. Former members of the sect say there may be dozens or even hundreds more marriage certificates at county clerk offices across the West.

While much of the focus of any polygamous group is on plural marriages that happen outside the law, records and interviews with current and former first wives in the Kington Group lend insight into how legal marriages are facilitated. Depending on one’s view, members of the Kingston Group either take care to follow marriage laws, or work to circumvent them.

Some former sect members, including two stars of the television show “Escaping Polygamy," say girls are pressured to marry at the age most kids are learning to drive and reading “Wuthering Heights.”

The marriages, former followers say, can be used as a tool to keep girls in the Kingston Group, known among younger members as “The Order.” For their part, the brides sometimes see legal marriages as a way to avoid becoming polygamists later (and consequently being matched with a husband perhaps twice their age) or a means to escape their parents’ crowded households.

“Most of the time,” said Shanell DeRieux, a former Kingston Group member now seen on “Escaping Polygamy,” “the girl’s only choice is to have babies because that’s how we build The Order — by population.”

Free agency

Current members dispute those characterizations. One woman who was married in 2014 at age 16 said she did so for the same reason most people do: She fell in love.

She also felt a religious call to wed and saw herself as mature enough to undertake such a commitment.

“It wasn’t forced,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified because of stigmas that often come with being associated with a polygamous sect. “It was all on me, and, for the most part, that’s the case — where it is the girl’s decision whether she wants to get married at that age.”

She said she knows of a few cases in which the girl was pressured by family or faith leaders to marry, “but I can count them all on one hand.”

A review of wedding certificates shows how the teen marriages are sanctioned at the highest levels of the Kingston Group. Paul E. Kingston, considered the top man, signed as a witness for four of the marriages that The Tribune found outside Utah.

For the marriages performed in Utah, Bill W. Stoddard signed as the officiant until his death in March. Stoddard was the president of the Latter Day Church of Christ, the Kingston Group’s incorporated religious organization.

The Kingston Group is believed to have a few thousand members, mostly in Utah and Idaho. In response to questions from the newspaper, Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society, sent an email saying marriages should occur within the age of legal consent and not be coerced.

“The DCCS reaffirms that each individual has their free agency to choose whom and when they will marry,” the statement said. “They should refrain from this decision until they can be well informed to make a mature and thoughtful decision before entering into marriage.”

The statement also said that of the Kingston Group individuals who married under age 18 in the past 20 years, 95.1 percent remain married, 94.2 percent have earned a high school degree, and a third, “most of them women,” have graduated from a public college or university.

Johnson did not provide the raw data to support those statistics. The education figures he cited would be a few percentage points higher than the average for Utah as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In an analysis written in 2015, a University of Maryland sociologist found that nationwide 37 percent of people who marry before age 20 divorce in the first 10 years.

Not every Kingston Group follower marries as a juvenile. The Tribune, with assistance from former sect members who reviewed the records, also found 20 cases in which both the bride and groom were at least 18.

Nor are youths from polygamous sects the only teens who marry in Utah. In Salt Lake County, for example, there were 45 marriages in which the bride or groom was 17 or younger, according to data from the county clerk’s office from Feb. 1, 2016, to April 10, 2018. Four of those appear to be couples from polygamous groups.

A nationwide debate is underway about teens, especially girls, marrying. A body of research suggests the teenage brain is not developed enough to make the kind of long-term decision needed for marriage. In Utah, Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, plans a bill that would raise the minimum marriage age to 18. Romero has said her concern is for all girls, not just those in polygamous sects.

Yet it’s teen marriages in the Kingston Group that spurred the Utah Legislature to act this year. It passed a bill adding forced marriage into the state’s definition of sexual abuse. Former sect members testified in favor of the measure, but it’s unclear whether the pressures faced by teens in the Kingston Group constitute forced marriage.

Some former teenage Kingston Group brides acknowledge they weren’t forced to marry; they made a choice. It was just the best choice, some say, among their bad options.

“To get out of this s----y situation, I have to get into another s----y situation,” said Kollene Snow, who married at 16 and is DeRieux’s full sister.

For now, Utah law says a 15-year-old may marry with the consent of a parent or guardian and the permission of a juvenile court judge. A state court website says the judge “must conclude that the marriage is voluntary and in the best interests of the minor.”

But 16- and 17-year-olds in Utah need only the consent of a parent to wed. Idaho, Colorado and Nevada, where the The Tribune also found Kingston Group marriages, have similar age and parental-consent requirements.

‘Get her married’

At age 15, Snow wanted out of the Kingston Group.

She is the fifth of her mother’s 12 children. Her father, John Daniel Kingston, has 14 wives. She grew up in Woods Cross and “hated” The Order all her life, she said in a recent interview.

At 15, Snow ran away from home, wound up in a foster home and later was returned to her mother. Her parents placed her in what she called a “repentance home,” where she wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone without supervision.

The doorknob to her room was removed. Snow said she was forced to fast, pray and read the Bible. She wasn’t allowed to leave the house until she decided whom to marry.

“They believe we’re God’s chosen people,” Snow said of the Kingston Group followers, “so you should start having kids as soon as possible.”

Snow and her mother, Shirley Hansen, have differing stories on what the mom’s role was in her daughter’s marriage.

Snow contends her mother was one of the people who told her she needed to think about whom she was going to wed.

Hansen, 50, in a recent interview, said she told her daughter that wanting to leave home was the wrong reason to get married.

On this much, though, mother and daughter agree: Snow’s father was the primary driver.

“What he told me was,” Hansen said, “‘Get her married so we don’t have to take care of her anymore.’”

Had Snow been a better behaved, more devout member of the Kingston Group, Hansen said, there may not have been a push to have her legally marry at 16.

Earlier in its history, the Kingston Group had plural wives under age 18. Members who have left in recent years say that changed after some of Paul Kingston’s brothers were convicted of crimes related to child abuse, sex with a minor or incest.

Now, former members say, girls who will be plural wives — meaning they have only a spiritual marriage to their husband — are left alone until they are 18 so laws about sex with a minor won’t apply. Girls who agree to become plural wives tend to be more devout and usually live in homes without their husband, thus receiving less scrutiny.

Lawful marriage and the way it binds people together legally and financially, Hansen said, is seen as a way to keep the more rebellious girls in the Kingston Group.

“The ones that misbehave, they try to push them to marry as soon as they can,” Hansen said. “So it means being a first [wife]. The ones they don’t think they have to worry about, they don’t push them as hard.”

Jessica Kingston said a girl’s devotion and attitude are often measured by her view of polygamy. Members of The Order are taught they need to be in a plural marriage to reach the highest heaven.

When a girl doesn’t want to be a polygamist, that information is shared among boys and men in the sect. Jessica Kingston said she has heard males talking to one another about a girl and say, “‘If you’re going to marry that girl, she’s going to have to be a first wife because she won’t live polygamy.’”

For parents, there can be other practical considerations in letting a teen marry, Hansen said. Three weeks after Snow married a 21-year-old man in Davis County, Hansen’s 17-year-old daughter legally married a 24-year-old man in Salt Lake County.

That daughter was born with a form of heart disease and had long acted responsibly in caring for it, Hansen said. So when her husband pushed for that daughter to marry, too, Hansen thought she was mature enough. Besides, the mother said, the girl needed her husband’s health insurance to treat her condition. For that, she would have to be legally married to him.

No. 1 choice

Former and current members of the Kingston Group say that kids are taught from a young age they one day will need to pray about whom to marry. Girls are told they will need to pray to God so he might show them who their No. 1 choice for marriage is.

“My 4-year-old comes to me and says she has to find out her No. 1 choice [of whom to marry] in The Order,” Jessica Kingston said.

Boys are taught they will need to receive revelation from God on whom to marry. Marriage preparation can accelerate at puberty.

Hansen said during family home evenings — nights when a man’s family gathers for religious studies and games — her husband would take girls 12 and older who were single and lead them in a teaching. He would talk to them about marriage and thinking of whom to marry, Hansen said. Snow said the classes also taught the girls to be submissive to their husbands and to keep a good house for them.

Dating or romance among young people before marriage is forbidden in the Kingston Group, but the sect does hold dances. When someone is interested in marriage, the process is something more like a job interview than a courtship.

It begins with the potential groom. If God gives him direction on whom to marry, he goes to his dad.

If the father believes his son received true direction from God, the son is sent to Paul Kingston or one of the people he designates to consider marriages. If Paul Kingston or the designee signs off, the groom next goes to the girl’s father. If that father says yes, the groom talks to the girl.

While all that is happening, the potential bride is supposed to have been praying about whom to marry. When Jessica Kingston was 15, her father told her she had four choices — apparently the number of suitors who had spoken to him about marrying her.

Jessica was given the list of suitors. Her top choice — the one whom she felt God told her to marry — was a man five years older than she and to whom she was related on both sides of her family tree. The relations are distant enough they wouldn’t encounter any of Utah’s prohibitions on marriage between siblings, first cousins or aunts/nephews and uncles/nieces. The suitor had asked her to dance a few times at The Order’s youth social events.

That wasn’t the only reason Jessica liked him. During the approval process, the young man had begun texting Jessica — something forbidden but that she says is common among Order teens who have an interest in one another. He told her he believed one did not need to practice polygamy to reach heaven.

But Jessica’s No. 1 choice was not her father’s. She said her father didn’t think the suitor was a good student. (Jessica’s dad and the young man had taken courses together at the University of Utah.) The father preferred another who had inquired about marrying Jessica.

Jessica suspects her dad was pushing her toward another man. She says marriages can be used in The Order to gain or maintain favor among the parents of the brides and grooms.

“It’s all political,” Jessica said. “And then, when the men get mad at each other, they won’t let the [other] man’s sons come forward” to marry one of their daughters.

Hansen said some men try to use their children to improve their status in the sect. Her husband, John Daniel Kingston, told his children to “marry up,” she said, meaning marry into a well-regarded family in the Kingston Group.

Jessica’s dad told her the wife can get only as high as her husband rises. He even had charts showing who were the higher families in the sect so his daughters knew where to look for a mate.

That usually means marrying a Kingston descendant. But lots of people in the sect are already descended from that family, Hansen said; that’s why there are so many cousin marriages in the Kingston Group. According to written histories, John Ortell Kingston, father of the current leader, also encouraged his family members to marry other kin to improve their own bloodline.

From Hansen’s perspective, the entire Kingston Group marriage process is like being told you can have anything to eat as long as it comes from a certain table.

“They teach the girls it’s their choice,” Hansen said, “but [say], ‘Here’s the selection.’”

Eventually, there was a meeting between Jessica Kingston, her parents and Paul Kingston. Jessica’s father relented during the meeting and gave his approval for his daughter to marry her No. 1 choice. Paul Kingston told her congratulations.

A few days later, the groom-to-be picked up Jessica and took her to Murray Park. He had arranged for a banner to be placed over a bridge there.

“Will you marry me?” it read.

The couple’s wedding certificate says Stoddard officiated the ceremony April 26, 2008, in West Valley City. Jessica Kingston wore a white dress. The groom wore a suit. No recordings or photos were allowed during the ceremony. The bride was 16. The groom was 21.

Pressure

Among those Kingston Group brides who marry as minors and for whom The Tribune was able to find birthdates, the average age was 16 years, 7 months and 12 days. Their grooms averaged 20 years and 18 days.

Girls who reach their mid- and late teens can start to feel the pressure to wed. Jessica Kingston said when word gets out that a boy or young man has asked a girl’s father for permission to marry her, friends and family are walking up to that girl asking, “Did you pray about him?”

DeRieux says she was still high school age when her father told her she needed to pray about whom to marry, get married and “build The Order.” Her father also started calling her mother and prodded her to pressure DeRieux to get married.

The pressure became so intense DeRieux stopped going to dances. Instead, she volunteered for extra shifts at the Kingston Group-run coal mine near Huntington, where she worked as a dispatcher.

At 17, she agreed to marry a man in his early 20s.

“I knew I wasn't supposed to marry him,” she said, “but I almost did to get everyone to shut up and leave me alone about marriage.”

The plans fizzled because her mother didn’t believe DeRieux had received direction from God to marry the man.

DeRieux did marry the next year at age 18 to a cousin who was 19. They did so July 3, 2008, in Grand Junction, Colo, where records show two other couples from the Kingston Group married that day. DeRieux says the other two girls were her half-sisters, both age 16. Their grooms were 22.

To go to Colorado, DeRieux said, she and her fiancé drove to Price, where they jumped into a 15-passenger van carrying their parents, the other two sets of brides and grooms and their parents.

When they arrived in Grand Junction, all three couples filled out the papers for a marriage license. The parents of the 16-year-olds also completed a form granting their permission.

Colorado does not require an officiant or a ceremony to marry. Once the couples signed the certificates and turned them back in to the Mesa County clerk, they were legally married.

DeRieux said she and her husband were not allowed to live together or consummate their marriage until they had a religious ceremony the following month. She received no sex education or premarital counseling.

Plural divorces

DeRieux’s marriage effectively ended in June 2010. She and her husband had moved to Billings, Mont., to work for a coal mine. According to Montana court documents, the couple had an argument at their apartment and DeRieux’s then-husband threw her down a flight of stairs.

He then pinned her on a bed, the documents say, and wouldn’t let her call for help. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He served one day in jail.

The couple’s divorce became final in 2011. DeRieux remarried at age 21 to a man who isn’t from the Kingston Group.

Snow said her marriage fell apart over her not liking the Kingston Group and her husband wanting to have another wife. Her husband knew she didn’t want him to have a plural spouse, she said, but his father told him he needed to have one. Their divorce was finalized in July 2012 — a little more than three years after they married.

Jessica Kingston said within a year of getting married, her husband started looking for a plural wife. Finding one wasn’t difficult.

Jessica said her husband was on a group text that went around listing girls or women who had not yet married with jokes about how old the females were getting. Jessica saw the list.

The young women ranged from about age 18 to 22. She said the marriage disintegrated when her husband married — spiritually — one of her half-sisters, who was 22 at the time.

Jessica said, strictly speaking, she and the other teen brides she knows chose to get married, but added: “It’s not much of a choice when they’re groomed to do that.”

She and her husband had four children with whom they share custody. Jessica has begun working with Hope After Polygamy, a charity started by the cast of “Escaping Polygamy” and other former Kingston Group members to assist people leaving polygamous sects.

Jessica as well as Snow, DeRieux and Hansen all favor raising the legal marriage age in Utah and other states to 18. Johnson said the Davis County Cooperative Society takes no position on the issue.

The woman who married in 2014 at age 16 and asked not to be identified is still with her husband. She does not favor a change in the marriage age. She said marrying at 16 mitigated the pressures U.S. society places on her to have statuesque looks and be immodest.

“There shouldn’t really be a reason for an age limit,” she said. “If someone is mature enough, they should be able to do whatever they want.”

The now-20-year-old said she and her husband have started a family of their own. If that child comes to her at age 16 wanting to marry, she said, she will have questions. Whether she gives her blessing, she said, will depend on the answers to those questions.

But age alone won’t determine her answer.

Utah running back Zack Moss, now weighing 220 pounds, says he's feeling faster and more explosive than ever. Ute coach Kyle Whittingham says Moss is composed of “nothing but blood, bones and muscle.”

So why wouldn't Utah's coaching staff just tell quarterback Tyler Huntley to turn and hand the football to his Florida high school teammate?

The answer is rooted in football mathematics and physics. These days, you can't block every defensive player.

That's why the zone read is a staple of nearly every offensive scheme, including Utah's. If observers wonder why the Utes ever would have Huntley carry the ball instead of Moss, Armand Shyne or another back, coaches say involving Huntley as a runner is necessary to succeed against an aggressive defense, with tacklers outnumbering blockers.

So the Utes' dilemma is how to make Moss as productive as possible and keep Huntley healthy, while trying to move the ball against defenses designed to stop the run. The coaching strategy involves ensuring that Huntley makes the proper read in handing the ball to Moss or pulling it back and running himself, as some people believe he did too much last season.

Whittingham is not one of them. “He only had a handful of decisions that were incorrect — when to give, when not to give,” Whittingham said. “The decisions on the hits he took were the big deal to me. Tyler Huntley’s going to be part of our run game; that’s a fact. We’re not going to stop running him, because he’s so valuable in that regard.”

It's also true that Moss' career-high, 196-yard rushing night came in November vs. Colorado, when Huntley was sidelined due to injury in one of three starts he missed as a sophomore. Moss' 26 carries against the Buffaloes more than doubled the number of runs by backup quarterback Troy Williams.

The numbers are somewhat deceiving, due to sacks and scrambles on passing plays, but in the last four games they played together in 2017, Huntley averaged 22 carries to Moss' 18.3 runs. Moss finished his sophomore season with 1,173 rushing yards. He believes he’s capable of much more. As he said after the Utes' first preseason practice, “Just get me through August, and we’ll see.”

Huntley likes having his ball in his hands; he’s a competitive player and a dynamic runner. Those traits make him important in Utah’s offense. Huntley wouldn’t cheat his close friend and prep classmate out of carries, just for his own sake. Yet he acknowledged “some situations” last year when he should have handed off the ball, promising to do a better job with more experience in offensive coordinator Troy Taylor’s scheme: “I just can’t wait to get on to the second year, and we’re going to see the difference.”

“Very rarely did [Huntley] flat-out keep the ball,” Taylor said. “He’s trying to read it. Now, sometimes it happens fast … but he’s pretty good at his decisions and his reads.”

And there’s no sense giving the ball to Moss just to meet quotas, if the defense is stacked to stop him and the unblocked end is always charging toward him.

“The real key behind the zone read is equating the numbers, and forcing the defense to have one more threat to worry about,” Whittingham said.

College football lore suggests the zone read was invented accidentally, when former Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez was coaching at tiny Glenville State in West Virginia in the early 1990s. A quarterback missed a handoff, so he ran around the spot vacated by the crashing defensive end. Pete Hoener, now an NFL assistant coach, is credited with developing the system at Iowa State in the late '90s as a way to deal with superior athletes at other schools in the Big 12.

And now, just about everybody's doing it, because defenses are so committed to loading up inside against the run, while trusting their cornerbacks in man-to-man coverage. The latest evolution is the run-pass option (RPO). The quarterback reads a linebacker's movement and chooses to hand off the ball or pass it over the defender's head, if he's coming toward the line of scrimmage.

Taylor said he studied everything the Utes tried offensively in 2017 — during the season, so he could make adjustments. The Utes did show improvement in November. “I just want to be dynamic,” he said. “If we want to be one of the better offenses in the country, we’ve got to be able to throw the ball, we’ve got to be able to do RPO, zone read, power read, all those things.”

In other words, the Utes can’t just give the ball to Moss or Shyne and try to block everybody, while Huntley watches it happen. Not that Taylor is averse to that strategy. “Hey, if it’s working every time, I’ll give it to him 40 times,” he said, smiling. “And Tyler would gladly do it.”

A long-distance bus had just broken down on Interstate 84 in Box Elder County when a lightning-ignited wildfire began sweeping over nearby fields of dry grass Friday close to the Utah-Idaho border.

“They were stuck up in that mountainous area, where there really aren’t a lot of places to go,” said Mitch Zundel, county spokesman. He said the bus appeared to be a tour bus.

County employees and nearby residents got in their cars and shuttled about 15 to 20 stranded bus passengers and their luggage out of harm’s way to the fairgrounds in Tremonton, where they were given food and water, Zundel said.

The lightning-caused fire ultimately forced crews to close I-84 for 32 miles between Tremonton and Snowville on Friday night as the flames approached the highway and threatened fields of grain crops and some ranching structures. It more than doubled in size overnight, from 7,000 acres to 15,000 acres — the equivalent of more than 11,000 football fields.

But Saturday morning, Zundel said, “Things are certainly positive.”

The interstate reopened about 4 a.m., fire officials wrote in a press statement. Crews had saved most of the wheat fields that were at risk and had dug protective barriers along the highway, Zundel said.

By Saturday evening, the fire was 45 percent contained.

“It seems like they have a pretty decent handle on it,” Zundel said.

Although I-84 is open, visibility is low because of smoke, and fire officials urge motorists to travel cautiously. The White’s Valley, Pocatello Valley and Johnson Canyon roads are closed.

The stranded bus passengers were picked up by another bus in Tremonton, Zundel said. He didn’t know their destination.

Bridgewater, N.J. • Ahead of campaigning in Ohio on Saturday, President Donald Trump unleashed a withering attack on the state’s favorite son, savaging LeBron James in a late-night tweet that derided the intelligence of one of the nation’s most prominent African-American men.

Trump blasted James after seemingly watching an interview the NBA superstar did earlier in the week with CNN anchor Don Lemon in which he deemed Trump divisive. Although James has long been a Trump critic, calling the president "U bum" in a 2017 tweet, the Friday night tweet was Trump's first attack on the player, who just opened up a school for underprivileged children in his hometown of Akron.

"Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon," Trump posted. "He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do."

Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2018

Trump then, unexpectedly, appeared to weigh in on the growing debate over who is the greatest NBA player of all time, James or Michael Jordan, by writing “I like Mike!”

Trump, who will spend Saturday evening at a rally for a fellow Republican outside Columbus, has long denounced the media — CNN in particular — and rarely lets a slight go unnoticed. But the attack on James, who was being interviewed by another black man, to some resembled a racial dog whistle and came just days after Trump deemed Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who is also black, as "low IQ" during a screed amid a rally in Pennsylvania.

Ohio Gov. Josh Kasich, a Republican who at times criticizes Trump, tweeted: "Rather than criticizing @KingJames, we should be celebrating him for his charity work and efforts to help kids."

Trump has repeatedly been questioned about his views on race, from deeming many Mexican immigrants "rapists" during his campaign kickoff speech for the Republican presidential nomination to placing blame on "both sides" for the violent clash between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, a year ago.

James, who campaigned for Trump's opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and has not been shy about using his celebrity for social causes, did the interview from the public school he opened for at-risk kids in Akron, called the "I Promise" school. Every student receives free tuition, as well as free food, a uniform and even a free bike.

In the interview, James said he "would never sit across" from Trump, though he would talk to former President Barack Obama. James' publicist declined to respond to Trump's tweet, but Lemon did, invoking both the administration's forced-family-separations policy and first lady Melania Trump's social media etiquette campaign.

"Who's the real dummy? A man who puts kids in classrooms or one who puts kids in cages? #BeBest" Lemon tweeted.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to clarify Trump's remarks. But even some Trump allies chided the remark.

And Geraldo Rivera, the journalist and Trump confidant, broke with the president to say he wished Trump "turned other cheek re @KingJames & @donlemon While I disagree with their conclusion that @POTUS is using sports to divide America along racial lines, they're both sincere & intelligent men. LeBron just pledged millions for a school for underprivileged kids."

Before entering politics, Trump frequently praised James and his own family tried to recruit him to the New York Knicks in 2010. But commenting on someone's intelligence, including his own, has long been a Trump trope. He has been criticized for complimenting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ("smart cookie") and Russian president Vladimir Putin ("very smart") and has been known to praise himself as "a very stable genius."

But he also uses "stupid" — or variations thereof — as a favored insult. He has used it to describe the FBI, the NFL, Democrats, the filibuster, the nation's immigration laws, journalists, trade policies and how the nation's leaders have dealt with topics like Iraq, Muslims, Canada and China.

He also, after former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called him a "moron," challenged his own Cabinet member to an IQ test.

James played for over a decade — and in two stints — with the Cleveland Cavaliers and delivered a title to the championship-starved region in 2016. Although he departed for the Los Angeles Lakers earlier this summer, the superstar remains very popular in the Buckeye State, and Trump's attack could be a gift for the Democrat in the congressional race that Trump is weighing in on Saturday in Ohio.

“I don’t have to tell (asterisk)anyone(asterisk) what LeBron James means to Ohio,” Democrat Danny O’Connor tweeted.