Well, if you ask Fanatics, not very high. I was perusing Fanatics this morning to see if there was any new Utah merch in their inventory, and I was shocked to see that Utah wasn’t one of the 80 teams on their web “quick link” (neither was BYU). To get to see Utah (and BYU) merch, you had to click on the “All 500+ NCAA teams” link. What made this surprising is the names of some of the teams that made their 80-team “quick link.” I’m talking about teams like Coastal Carolina, Cornell, Delaware, Eastern Carolina, James Madison, Providence, Liberty, South Florida, etc…
As far as the Big XII is concerned, only Utah, BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston weren’t included in the 80-team “quick link.” So, my question is this…what does this say, if anything, about the national perception of where Utah stands and of the purchasing power of their fans? Maybe nothing, but given how well Utah travels and how well supported the team is, you’d figure that they’d surely be placed among the 80 most popular teams in the nation. Who knows…maybe this is just a conversation starter.
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