Utes favored by Vegas and the Major Press… But Utah getting dogged by others.

[prestitute]

It seems like everyone wants to pick us for the CFP but then everyone goes on to pick UF in the weekly. Frankly, I don’t think the nation respects us, and that comes from lack of knowledge. People don’t understand that Utah HAS dudes this year. Excited to go and surprise some people in the swamp! 

[AlohaUte]

Meh, that’s the nature of the sports world, particularly college football. It’s best to just enjoy the ride. I think the Utes have the talent and coaching to make the playoff, but other teams do too.

[PhiladelphiaUte]

The more we schedule Home-&-Homes with teams like Pittsburgh, Michigan, Florida, Baylor, Arkansas, LSU, and Wisconsin, the more respect we’ll earn from the nation.

Conversely, when the ONLY non-conference, regular season P5 teams we’d played since 2011 were Pitt (2011) and Mich (2014, 2015), that does NOT earn much respect from the nation.  And we can’t complain about that.  What we can complain about is, why had our OOC schedules consisted of 18 midmajors (60%), 9 FCS (30%), and only 3 P5 (10%) opponents?

Fortunately, our future schedules look MUCH better.  From 2022 thru 2033, we have (thus far) 18 P5 (66.7%) opponents, 3 midmajors (11.1%), and 6 FCS (22.2%) teams.

Granted that 8 of our 18 P5 opponents are ybU-p and Hou — who were midmajors when we’d scheduled them — the fact they’ll be Big 12 teams at game time will reflect better on Utah’s program from a national perspective.

We may not have as much respect as we deserve now, but we’ll be receiving it very soon.  All we have to do is win.

[Utesbyfive]

Who knows what the future will bring. The Pac-10 could be deader than a doornail by the time we play LSU.

We certainly are hamstrung by having to play TDS all the f’n time. ☹️

[Dallas]

Florida lost to bama by just 2 or 3 points last year. That scares me.

[D T]

Alabama was a different team by year’s end.

[Redblood]

It’s a two edged sword. Now that we’ve started to play better opponents in bowl games we miraculously go from can’t be beat ever, to losing quite a bit. When we first started PAC play we won like every OOC game but one, even tho we had a losing record in conference. Made our overall season seem better. You can’t schedule those good teams OOC and not lose some of them. I’m not sure what the right trade off is. I guess we’ll see in time.

[Tony (admin)]

Respect is earned. Time to go earn it. 

[prestitute]

I am honestly loving the disrespect! This gives Utah a chance to do what we do best, prove people wrong. We tend to love big teams treating us as less than. I am all in our Utes channelling that.