Believe it or not (and it took some getting used to), I’m glad we’re in the same conference again. Seems like most of my Ute friends are coming around to the idea as well.
I’m heading to a few Big 12 away games this year (@Kansas @Ok State). They’re passionate about their sports like we are.
Good luck in the PAC this year.
I’m excited to be in the same conference with you and TCU and I’m excited the Arizona teams are here as well. It should be a lot of fun.
And I’m very excited to start another streak vs you guys. Hats off, you kicked our ■■■ last time we played. It’s time to get some payback. 
It’s going to be weird to be in a conference without a “blue blood”. Hell, even in the MWC, you guys were always painted (at least locally) to be the cream of the crop. We’ve always been fighting for respect.
Unless Utah’s recruiting falls off a cliff, we will come into the conference as one of, if not the most, talent team. Such a different place to be. It’s exciting.
It’s a very very evenly matched conference. I expect you guys, TCU, K-State and Tech to be near the top on Day 1.
I think BYU will be fine, but it’ll take us some time to get the depth we need.
Scheduling will be interesting. Curious if they’ll do two 8 team divisions or if they’ll do four 4 team pods.
I think Oklahoma State will be in the group as well.
I hope they do two 8 team divisions and then treat it like two separate conferences. I have history with Arizona, ASU, BYU, TCU. Utah makes five. Add in Texas Tech. Six. Baylor and Texas A&M make 8.
I don’t need to play UCF, Houston, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Iowa St, Kansas, Kansas St, and Oklahoma St.
I have no history or story with them and those games just don’t interest me. Maybe West Virginia, slightly.
Do an 8 game conference schedule. 7 vs your “division” and one Home and Home with another team from the other side. 4 OOC games. That probably won’t happen, but that is what I’d prefer.
Yeah IDK. I think one of the things being Independent was we got used to going all over the place for different games each year.
Pods would look (potentially) like this. You play everyone in your division and 2 from each division (3+2+2+2). Play all teams every two years. Play all teams at home every four years
Always nice to interact with rational, reasonable people. Thanks for the post.
Next year is a long way away, but based on some of the shootouts we’ve seen in the B12, I’m interested to see if we alter our defensive identity, and by how much. We’ve face some high octane offenses in the PAC - Caleb Williams and SC - but we’ve found a way to get things under control.
CFB always evolves. We had the era of big backs and 260 lb LBs (Kautai Olevau) and without compromising our physical reputation Utah in the PAC has trended toward athleticism, with bruisers like Zack Moss losing a little weight, same with Jaylon Glover, this year. Our LBs have slimmed down to 220-230 more, though Lloyd, Damuni and Lander Barton are bigger.
It might be interesting to look at B12 rosters to look at OL sizes.
Not a bad idea.
In the PAC the schools all wanted to get to SoCal every year, for recruiting. I think we’ll see the same thing with Texas, and interest in getting to FL, even though it’s just one school.
The Texas recruiting lure I think makes an East-West split less likely, unless they split the Texas schools.
Good point on the East/West split. I would think/hope that BYU, Utah, the Arizona schools and CO will insist upon playing in Texas and Florida fairly frequently, if for recruiting only.
Personally, I’m nervous about the high octane offenses in the Big 12. BYU’s defense was horrid last year. Hill is a good DC, but we’ll give up some points.
Utah’s style translates anywhere.
BTW, I went to the BYU game in Palo Alto last year. There were legit 5000 Stanford fans (maybe) in that stadium and probably 25K BYU fans. It was completely crazy. I’ve never seen a worse home environment for a game. The environments will simply be better top to bottom in the Big 12.
Jay Hill knows what he’s doing, he’s a really good coach.
Right now he’s talking about building an attacking defense, but I suspect the B12 offenses may make him pay. We had a similar awakening going from the MWC to the PAC. Maybe Jay is mostly trying to change the mentality of the defense so they can apply pressure, pick their spots to do so.
The PAC QBs and receivers were just far better, and endless amounts of blitzing was countered by smart coaches just adding protection to allow pinpoint accurate QBs and talented WRs really make it tough on us.
One game in particular, Oregon State with Sean Mannion at QB and Brandin Cooks at WR. I think they’re both still in the league, but it was eye opening to see them just go max-protect, with Cooks beating double teams and Mannion dropping dimes over and over.
It took us time to adjust to the different talent level.
A big risk for BYU is will the fans be patient enough for Kalani and crew to make that jump? It doesn’t help if Utah does pretty well. That compounds the pressure.
I don’t wish BYU well, of course, but having known Kalani and Roderick and Hill, I hope those guys survive. They’re good guys, good coaches.
I think fans will be patient. Our depth is simply not where it needs to be. And with BYU, speed on the outside will always be a problem.
We’ve been playing 5-7 P5 games per year for the last several years (not counting COVID 2020). So the jump won’t be quite as dramatic, but that’s certainly not the same as week in week out. Mostly I’m worried about late season games as injuries pile up.
November could be ugly for us.
I think you’re mostly right. BYU always has tough, smart players, and doesn’t often under play, they always seem well prepped against P5… Sure, there have been some letdown games, and honestly I haven’t watched them as often as I used to. That will change now, of course. 
One thing we noticed after joining the PAC - based on how we’d done against P5, we thought we could be competitive right away. One big thing we didn’t see coming was the daunting nature of P5, week after week.
In the MWC you could circle 3 maybe 4 games a year, and could survive ugly outings against other teams and still comfortably get to 10 win seasons. When we played P5 teams we were definitely on point, where in hindsight Aaron Rodgers and Cal or Texas A&M weren’t at the same level of acuity.
We were their New Mexico. It wasn’t like Cal getting up to play UCLA or even Wazzu, league games. We were more like them going to play a dangerous Fresno State, and we bagged enough of those games to have a swagger. A bit like your ‘21 season. Got us, got ASU, UA in Vegas(?), maybe Stanford. Play that same lineup, in a row, add the rest of the schools, with them motivated to knock you off… a different animal.
Week after week in P5 is a battering ram, not just on depth, but in terms of being able to play “up” every single week.
At least that was our experience.
Great analogy on New Mexico. Yeah I think most fans other than the most delusional would gladly take a 6-6 year this year.
I think our offense will be able to score points (if Slovis is at all functional). I’m hopeful Jay Hill can get the D playing better.
2021 P5s were AZ, Utah, ASU, Wazzu, USC, Baylor, Virginia. Lost to Baylor in Waco.
Welcome. I expect the B12 to be a huge advantage for BYU as the PAC 12 was for us. I also expect BYU to take some lumps for a while as the program adjusts- as did Utah. People conveniently forget that Whittingham was on the hot seat with back to back 5-7 seasons and a never ending rotation of offensive coordinators. Kilani is a competent dude and needs to be given the time to gear up for the conference.
Depth is the real issue. BYU’s front line guys will be fine. But what happens when they are down to 4th string at multiple positions on both sides of the ball? Utah is still fighting to develop depth and we are not in the same ball park as the big boys. Ohio State lined up Smith-Njigba in the Rose bowl and no one knew if he was any good because he hadn’t played all season. He looked like a combination of Jerry Rice and Barry Sanders out there schooling our 4th string secondary. Sigh.
As for the competition in the B12- I expect it to be very good. Football appears to be something of a religion in Texas and a lot of those kids are remarkable players. Some of our best players are and have been under recruited Texas boys that really showed out once on campus. Playing a bunch of teams with those kind of players gives me a little pause frankly.
Back in the MWC days, TCU was always really good regardless of how much national recognition they were getting at the moment. I don’t think that has changed and I don’t think they are alone in having quality players.
It is going to be a lot of fun. We just need some time to grieve over the death of the PAC 12. We really loved being in that conference.
Sei la vie.
c’est la vie