Last week, standing in the Utes meeting room, a curious Kyle Whittingham asked his players to raise their hands.
He wanted to see how many of his players had played in Utah and BYU’s historic rivalry game.
To his surprise, only nine players extended their arms into the air.
“It’s different than it used to be, I can tell you that,” Whittingham told The Salt Lake Tribune.
“Three years before the advent of the portal, you’d have probably had half the team’s hands go up, but now with all the turnover and the transition, it’s a little different feel, because so few guys have experienced it. We’re trying to educate the intensity of the rivalry and the emotion that’s involved.”
For the first time since 2021, the BYU-Utah rivalry is set to return at 8:15 p.m. MT this Saturday in Salt Lake City. It will end the longest break in the rivalry’s history since the 1940s.
And it’s all thanks to conference realignment.
While massive shifts across the college football landscape have killed off some traditional rivalries, the Utes and Cougars finding a home together in the Big 12 Conference has rekindled one of the game’s longstanding feuds.
But for how long?
“For the moment, we’re going to be playing every year at least until things reshuffle again, which will happen in three to five years,” Whittingham said.
That’s the reality of college football now. The world Whittingham entered as Utah’s head coach in 2004 has vastly changed in the last two decades. And the next phase of conference realignment will likely reshape the future of the BYU-Utah rivalry again.
The game could one day return to being a non-conference contest, where the programs handpick how the game works into their schedules.
The rivalry could even cease to exist if one team is left out of a potential super conference absorption led by the SEC and Big Ten
“What that alignment is going to look like is anybody’s guess,” Whittingham said. “I can’t imagine all Power Four programs are going to make the cut. And, so when they draw that line in the sand, we’ll have to see where each program is at that time and how exclusive those super conferences are going to be. Forty-eight teams? Is it 32 teams? Who knows?”
(Rick Bowmer | AP) The logo for the Big 12 Conference has been applied to the field for an NCAA college football game between Sam Houston State and BYU on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023, in Provo.
For now, the Utes and Cougars will enjoy it.
“I just hope everybody remembers what it was like when we didn’t have this game on the schedule and how difficult it was,” BYU head coach Kalani Sitake said last week. “Just didn’t feel right, you know?
But in college football these days, nothing is guaranteed to last.
Oklahoma State athletic director Chad Weiberg has seen a historic rivalry flame out in his own backyard. When news broke that Oklahoma and Texas were usurping the Big 12 and leaving for the SEC in the summer of 2021, the future of Bedlam — the historic in-state rivalry game between the Cowboys and the Sooners — was put into question.
Soon enough, fans, players and coaches realized the series, which had previously played uninterrupted since 1910, would come to an end in 2023.
“It all just boils down to the money,” Weiberg told The Tribune. “Programs are changing the conference affiliations, to where they can get the most money from the media rights deals. And obviously there’s a lot of pressures on our finances with the changing landscape of college athletics.
“But, it is a big deal, and it is disappointing to lose that. It’s not what fans want.”
Despite OSU and OU scheduling the Bedlam series in softball, basketball and other sports since their conference breakup, the future of a football match between the two won’t occur until the late 2030s. The Cowboys won’t have an open non-conference schedule until then.
“We talk fairly regularly, and keep open dialog,” Weiberg said. “We talk about scheduling basketball or scheduling baseball or softball or the other sports, so we’ll continue to talk about football as well.”
While Bedlam provides a grim reality of an in-state rivalry perishing due to conference realignment, The Apple Cup has provided some hope for other rivalries like BYU-Utah.
Washington State and Washington have continued their partnership despite the dissolution of the Pac-12. Still there is always a threat for the game to go extinct, just ask WSU athletic director Anne McCoy, who saw the original iteration of the Pac-12 fizzle out.
“There are so many decisions and things being done that aren’t necessarily good, in some cases for the fans,” McCoy told The Tribune. “Unless something drastically changes with how football scheduling is done nationally. It seems to me that as long as schools continue to sponsor the sport and continue to have both conference and non-conference schedules things will work out.”
McCoy says the pair of Apple Cup rivals have the game scheduled through 2028, and there’s momentum building for its continuation that way despite Washington bolting for the Big Ten alongside Oregon, UCLA and USC.
“I think the initial reaction is probably everybody, everywhere at Washington and at Washington State, as we would have loved to think about not playing it,” McCoy said. “Eventually everybody took a collective deep breath and thought about what is best for the fans, for the players, for the two schools and the state.
“It just has to be a priority for both schools. But, if it’s not a priority, it’s easy to find reasons why it doesn’t work.”
The Utes have been guilty of that in the past, choosing national prominence over playing a regularly scheduled non-conference game with BYU in the past. With both programs in the Big 12 for the foreseeable future, the Cougars and the Utes appear to be on the right side of the pecking order.
BYU could very well solidify its chances of making it to a rumored super league with a CFP run.
Utah, meanwhile, has history on its side despite a 4-4 record midway through the 2024 season.
For the time being, both appear to be on the right side of the line that will someday be drawn, according to former Utes athletic director Chris Hill.
“I’m always optimistic that the Utes are going to win,” Hill said. “At the same time, I think BYU and Utah are in very similar positions. As of today, I think they’re on the right side of the line, but who knows where that line is going to be drawn.”
Despite a disappointing season, Whittingham believes the Utes are in a good position to move vertically in the next phase of realignment.
“I would say it’s more a body of the work of the last 20 years, 30 years more so than one year,” Whittingham said in his weekly news conference on Monday. “I think they’re going to look at the big picture. There’s so many things involved. It’s not just your win-loss record overall — although that’ll be a big importance — but it’ll factor in how big your stadium is, your following, and the overall state of the program and what you bring to the table.
“That’s really what it boils down to, is, what do you bring to the table as a program, as a fan base, to make yourself attractive to be in that Power Two.”
Perhaps a historic rivalry would be of interest, too.
