Utah 2026 offseason

Football
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Autuia is staying on as RB coach

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Today’s Bagley offering

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So Lomu has declared for the NFL draft, and who can blame him. His announcement doesn’t say anything about playing in the LV Bowl or not. Anyone have any insight? The selfish part of me hopes for few, if any, opt-outs just to honor Coach Whitt.

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I thought I saw Lomu and Fano had opted out of the bowl to prep for the draft.

The other 3 (Kump, Mokofisi, Tanoa) are out of eligibility but hopefully they play. Have to rebuild the entire line next year - some got some reps this year and hopefully Obot and Benjamin can step in and be solid as FR. Maybe a transfer or 2 as well to start of provide depth.

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I haven’t seen anything definitive on anybody, but maybe I just missed it.

As an aside, this is something I’d have written into NIL deals. You opt out because you’re focused on your next, unknown as of yet, employer, there’s a substantial financial penalty. It’s part of my, “You want to be a pro, here’s part of how that works,” philosophy.

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I think that’s fine, but the school or someone paying NIL should provide an injury insurance policy for the bowl game (maybe a smaller policy for top guys for the whole season). I don’t think there should be a substantial penalty. They were offered NIL for the season, not post-season. But if they were ‘penalized’, it shouldn’t be more than 1/13th of the offer. Or keep it separate for a post-season ‘bonus’. Bowls should rev share with players (I think there is some incentive now?) and if they don’t play, they don’t get it.

Players will play in CFP for a chance for a title. But most bowl games are less than exhibitions now. The risk-reward doesn’t play out anymore just for suiting up one more time. It’s why the NLF pro-bowl was a severely degraded product and they had to change it up.

I read the LA Bowl is going to stop after this year. ESPN props up/owns most of the bowls, the ‘lower’ ones are poorly attended but it’s just to have something to put on TV. Teams are opting out of playing (ND, Iowa St., KSU, then a bunch of 5-7 teams that had moved on and didn’t want to play in the Birmingham Bowl). Unless something changes soon, I don’t see how they will keep most bowls going.

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No doubt the former glut of meaningless bowls has made them less enticing. The only reason we’ve chosen to go to LV is because it’s Whitt’s last game. If not, we would have had plenty of fun watching it next to the wet bar in our basement.

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