Finally, we are going to find out how good Utah’s football team really is. At last, the Utes are going to pick on someone their own size, as it were. Two months into the season, we will see if they really are one of the best teams in the nation.
At this point, it’s a mystery.
The Utes are ranked 10th in this week’s AP Top 25 poll, and they’re ranked even higher in some of the complex, highly esoteric computer polls nobody understands (and rarely follows), but those rankings have been based mostly on supposition.
The Utes rank 61st in strength of schedule, according to the Massey computer ratings, which seems generous when you look at their opponents. They’ve played 2-5 Idaho (an FCS school), 3-4 Arkansas, 2-4 Utah State, 3-3 Iowa State, 2-4 Kansas and 2-4 Colorado. They have a combined record of 14-24. Utah has outscored them by a combined total of 241-89.
Every year, there’s a lot of talk about the importance of a strong schedule, but then it gets thrown out the window once the season begins. That’s a reflection of the impossibility of accurate rankings and perhaps bias more than anything else. Just look at what has happened to NFL power rankings, which had the LA Rams as one of the league’s best and now they are 2-4.
No one can accuse the Utes of creating a soft schedule, albeit with one exception — the three-game nonconference schedule should have been better. The schedule is made years in advance, and it was probably assumed Arkansas, an SEC team, would present a better challenge. But they should’ve replaced Idaho or Utah State with a more quality opponent.
The Utes have no control over their conference schedule. With 16 schools in the Big 12, it is impossible to play every team each season. This happens to be the year that Utah doesn’t face No. 8 Texas Tech, but does play five of the worst teams in the league.
The Utes have had a soft schedule to date, but that is about to change. Everything until now has been prologue. They face nationally ranked opponents in three of the next four weekends. On Saturday night, the Utes will face 14th-ranked Houston, whose only loss was a 28-26 decision to unbeaten Texas Tech. Two weeks later, they will meet No. 2-ranked BYU, and the week after that, they will play 25th-ranked Arizona.
The Utes are staring at one of the most difficult stretches in school history.
College football lives and dies with its rankings, but when the stars align, sometimes things are settled with actual head-to-head matchups. Even then, rankings — those calculated by a computer — can trump head-to-head results.
In the Massey computer ratings, Utah is fifth, Notre Dame sixth and BYU seventh — in other words, BYU is ranked behind a team it just beat a few days ago. The Utes’ easy schedule didn’t seem to matter to the computer as much as the unbeaten record and the lopsided scores.
ESPN’s CFP power rankings place Utah 13th, BYU 14th — and Notre Dame second, the same ranking the latter held before losing to BYU. Notre Dame is ranked 47th in the Massey ratings for strength of schedule, the kind of schedule a team can manage if it doesn’t belong to a conference and doesn’t care about such things.
The second half of Utah’s schedule gives the Utes a chance to confirm or refute their high ranking with head-to-head matchups.
