The Utah Utes football program is a college football team that competes in the Pac-12 Conference (Pac-12) of the Football Bowl Subdivision of NCAA Division I and represents the University of Utah. The Utah college football program began in 1892 and has played home games at the current site of Rice-Eccles Stadium since 1927. They have won 25 conference championships in five conferences during their history, and, as of the end of the 2021 season, they have a cumulative record of 691 wins, 469 losses, and 31 ties (.591).
Utah rugby plays in Division 1 in the Pacific Athletic Conference, and plays its postseason in the Varsity Cup Championship. The success of the Utah rugby program has led to commercial success, with Utah rugby securing sponsorships from national companies such as Under Armor and New York Life. Utah rugby has been led since 2008 by head coach Blake Burdette, who played for the US national team at the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
Their current home stadium, Rice-Eccles Stadium, was built in 1998 on the site of their former home, Rice Stadium. The Utes have a record of 13–4 (.765) in bowl games, which is the highest percentage in the nation for teams who have been to more than ten bowls. They have won twenty-four conference championships, including six in a row from 1928 to 1933 when they were part of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. The team is coached by Lynne Roberts, who came to Utah from Pacific after the firing of previous Utes head coach Anthony Levrets following the 2014–15 season.
The Utes have gone to the NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship tournament 15 times, and former coach Elaine Elliott has a 536–212 record (.717). The program's most successful season came in the 2005–2006 campaign. The Utes, who finished in 2nd place in the Mountain West Conference, won the conference tournament championship and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the 14th time in school history. After getting by Middle Tennessee in the first round of the 2006 Women's NCAA Tournament, Utah surprised the 4th seeded Arizona State Sun Devils to advance to the Sweet 16 for only the second time in school history. There the Utes faced 8th seeded Boston College and gutted out a 3-point win, advancing to the Elite Eight for the first time in school history. Making the regional finals, Utah became the first women's team in Mountain West Conference history to ever do so.
In doing so, the Utes would go on to play 2nd seeded, and eventual national champion, Maryland. The game went into OT, but Maryland prevailed and Utah's amazing run came to an end. In 1991, his second season, he posted a 7–5 record, but a blowout loss to rival BYU kept them out of a bowl.
A year later, he led the Utes to the 1992 Copper Bowl, the program's first bowl appearance in 28 years. He took the Utes to six bowl games during his tenure, a noteworthy feat considering the Utes had played in just three bowl games in their entire history prior to his arrival. During his tenure at Utah, McBride posted an overall record of 88–63 (.582), at the time the second-most wins by a coach in the history of Utah football.
Ike Armstrong was originally hired to coach both the men's basketball team and the football team. While he lasted only two years as basketball coach, in football he amassed a record of 141–55–15 (.704) during his 25 years as head coach, which places him second among Utah head coaches for total wins. Under Armstrong, Utah won thirteen conference championships, including six in a row from 1928 to 1933 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. His teams produced three undefeated and untied seasons and two more seasons where Utah was undefeated but tied . SALT LAKE CITY — A few Utah college football teams are gearing up for their next challenge as the regular season comes to a close. There are two conference championships and some bowl games around the corner.
In the years when Utah does not place first, they are almost always #2 or #3. The ten-time national champion Utah gymnastics team has qualified for a record 31st-consecutive national championship. Utah is the only program to qualify for all 25 NCAA Championships. The Utes won the 2006 women's gymnastics attendance title, averaging 12,747 spectators to their six regular season home meets. It marked the second-highest attendance average in Utah and NCAA gymnastics history.
Utah has won twenty-two of the last twenty-five gymnastics attendance titles. This is also one of the highest attendance averages for any women's college sport in the nation. The Utes have a 104–44 (.703) record since the beginning of the 2000 season. Along the way, Utah engineered an eighteen-game winning streak. They produced an undefeated season in 2004, when the Utes were 12–0 and became the first school from a Bowl Championship Series non-AQ conference to play in a BCS bowl game, earning them the title of BCS Busters. The Utes played the Big East Conference champion Pittsburgh Panthers in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, winning 35–7.
Later that year Alex Smith, who was Utah's quarterback for the 2003 and 2004 seasons, was drafted #1 by the San Francisco 49ers in the 2005 NFL Draft. He became the first player in the state of Utah to ever be drafted first. This culminated in the University of Utah becoming the first school in history to produce two #1 professional draft picks in the same year when Andrew Bogut became the #1 pick in the 2005 NBA Draft. Utah offers a total of 19 varsity sports—seven for men, 11 for women, and one coeducational.
Baseball, football, golf, and lacrosse are sponsored for men only. Beach volleyball, cross country, gymnastics, indoor track & field, indoor volleyball, outdoor track & field, soccer, and softball are sponsored for women only. Basketball, swimming & diving, and tennis are sponsored for both sexes. The coeducational sport is skiing; while schools have separate men's and women's squads, the NCAA awards a single national team championship. Utah's newest varsity sport is men's lacrosse, which played its first season in 2019 (2018–19 school year). In his second season as head coach, the Utes repeated as conference champions.
They were a high scoring team; they scored 544 total points on the season, which is a team record, and averaged 45.33 points per game. They played key out-of-conference games against Texas A&M, Arizona, and North Carolina, and they won every game by at least two touchdowns . After completing an undefeated season, Utah became the first team from a non-automatically qualifying BCS conference to play in a BCS bowl. The Utes played Big East Conference champion Pittsburgh in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, winning 35–7. The Runnin' Utes basketball program has the 9th-most wins among college basketball programs. The Utes have made 27 NCAA Tournament appearances, which ranks 7th all-time, while the Utes 10 outright conference championships is the 5th best in NCAA history.
He coached for eight seasons from 1958 to 1965 before leaving for Iowa. During his tenure, the Utes had a record of 42–39–1 (.518) and were co-conference champions of the Western Athletic Conference in 1964. As a reward, the Utes garnered an invitation to Atlantic City to play in the 1964 Liberty Bowl, which was the first major college football game held indoors. Utah dominated the game against West Virginia from start to finish and won by the score of 32–6.
Other college teams and coaches offered condolences and memorials for the player, who seemingly would've gone on to do more great things. University of Southern California head coach Clay Helton and his Colorado University counterpart Karl Dorrell offered thoughts and prayers to his family, friends and members of the Utah Football community. Director of Athletics Mark Harlan also expressed devastation at Jordan's death and offered condolences to the player's family, friends and team. For the Utah football team, the facility houses over 47,000-square feet of offices, meeting rooms and an auditorium. It also includes a 6,500-square foot locker room and a spacious 3,600-square foot players' lounge that spills out to a sprawling two-tiered observation deck overlooking the football practice fields. Providing great views of the Salt Lake valley and Rice-Eccles Stadium, the deck has already proven to be a popular place for team get-togethers and alumni events.
The building also features a new and expanded 6,500-square foot Utah Football Hall of Fame. The University of Utah football team is gearing up for the program's first ever trip to the Rose Bowl. This Utah team has gone through a lot over the past year, but they've reached the mountaintop after winning their first Pac-12 title and earning their spot in one of the most prestigious games in the country. The Battle of the Brothers refers to the rivalry between Utah and Utah State.
Both programs played their first game in history by playing each other on November 25, 1892, a game which Utah State won 12–0. The teams played every year from 1944 to 2009 before a hiatus in the series took place. The game has had five contests since the 2009 hiatus with Utah being 4-1 in that time.
To make matters worse, these years coincided with the emergence of BYU football under the tutelage of LaVell Edwards. The MSC was popularly called the "Big Seven Conference", and then after Colorado left following the 1947 season, popularly called the "Skyline Conference" or "Skyline Six". Utah played in and won its first bowl game, the 1939 Sun Bowl, during Armstrong's tenure in the MSC. Armstrong also helped keep the team in existence during World War II even though most of the other schools in the conference decided not to field teams from 1943 to 1945. Since taking control of the Utes 17 years ago, Whittingham has cemented himself as perhaps one of the greatest coaching figures in the history of sports in the Beehive State.
He's the winningest coach ever at Utah, led the Utes to an undefeated season in 2008, navigated the program's move from the Mountain West to the Pac-12 Conference, and has sent dozens of players to the NFL. Swoop, a red-tailed hawk, is the mascot of the Utah Utes sports teams. The university introduced Swoop with the consent of the tribal council of the Ute tribe in 1996. Originally the school's mascot was an American Indian, but was dropped. Later Hoyo, a cartoon Indian Boy, became an unofficial mascot, but was also dropped.
During the 1980s the Crimson Warrior, a Caucasian horseman dressed in Indian costume, would ride onto the field before home football games and plant a lance into a bale of hay. The warrior was considered more a symbol of the school than a mascot. Andrew Bogut was selected #1 in the 2005 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, making the University of Utah the only school in NCAA history to produce the #1 draft pick in both the NBA and NFL in the same year . Other notable players that have gone on to play in the NBA are Delon Wright, Andre Miller, Keith Van Horn, Michael Doleac, Danny Vranes and Tom Chambers.
The Utes have also been coached by several top NCAA coaches, including Vadal Peterson – the winningest coach in Utah basketball history, hall of fame coach Jack Gardner, Bill Foster and Rick Majerus. The Utes were the favorites to win the Mountain West after tying for the conference title a year earlier, but lost their first four games en route to a 4–7 record, their first losing record since McBride's arrival. Season-ticket sales fell 15% as a result, problematic given the costly rebuilding of Rice-Eccles Stadium, and pressure rose to fire McBride.
The Utes rebounded in 2001, achieving a winning record and scoring an upset win in the 2001 Las Vegas Bowl over the USC Trojans in Pete Carroll's first season. With the Utes slipping again into a losing season, McBride was fired by Utah after the 2002 season and replaced by Urban Meyer. Despite the inglorious end to McBride's tenure, he is credited with laying the foundation for Utah's rise to national prominence, which came under his successors.
Nagel's replacement, Mike Giddings posted a record of 9–12 (.429) during the 1966 and 1967 seasons before resigning. We will build this as a community and celebrate many victories in an enhanced game-day environment in the decades ahead. Lowe was in his third season with the University of Utah's football team. Lowe was the first recipient of the Ty Jordan Memorial Scholarship, an award created to honor former Utes player Ty Jordan, who lost his life after an accidental shooting in December 2020.
President McKay is not the only latter-day Apostle who played for the university that was founded in 1850 by Brigham Young. Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, a late member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was a Ute halfback as a young man and a lifelong supporter of the school's football program. Utah Utes defensive end Mika Tafua brings down Oregon State Beavers quarterback Chance Nolan as Utah and Oregon State play a college football game at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Sunday, Dec. 6, 2020. Of course, football success and playing in one of the highest-profile bowls in college football is often something that lends to donors wanting to further engage and potentially help with future capital projects.
Harlan indicated, as he has in the past, that Utah is "never done" in trying to improve athletics facilities. Utah is currently coached by Kyle Whittingham, who took over for Urban Meyer after Meyer left Utah for Florida after two seasons with the Utes. During the 2008 season, Utah again went undefeated with a 13–0 record, which included a 31–17 victory over the Alabama Crimson Tide in the 2009 Sugar Bowl. In Whittingham's seven years the Utes are 65–25 overall and 39–18 in conference play and have won six bowl games (the Emerald Bowl, the Armed Forces Bowl, the Poinsettia Bowl , the Sugar Bowl, and the Sun Bowl). Despite not having played each other in nearly 50 years prior to the 2011–12 season, Utah and Colorado maintain a storied rivalry that was reignited with the admission of both teams into the Pac-12.
Prior to the discontinuance of the rivalry in 1963, the two teams had played each other 57 times beginning in 1903, with Colorado leading the rivalry 30–24–3. This included an upset by Utah in 1962, when Colorado was ranked No. 8 in the nation. The two teams have discussed creating a trophy to "speed up" the development of the rivalry. There have been three games since joining the Pac-12 Conference that have had division title implications. In the 2011 game, Colorado defeated Utah 17–14, denying the Utes an opportunity to play for the Pac-12 Championship.
In 2016, Colorado defeated Utah in Boulder 27–22 to secure its first Pac-12 South title. The 2018 iteration saw Utah defeat Colorado in Boulder 30–7 to help secure its first outright Pac-12 South title. "Aaron was a terrific young man, a leader on our football team, and a rock of resiliency and courage," Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said in a statement.
"We have been in communication with Aaron's family and we are providing support to them, as well as to the student-athletes, coaches and staff in all of our athletics programs, and our focus will remain on them." Lowe was a defensive back who played 11 games on special teams as a freshman in 2019. Last season saw Lowe playing in five games, also on special teams. Lowe appeared in each of Utah's first four games of the current season. Lowe appeared in 16 combined games on special teams his first two seasons and played in all four games this season. Lowe died from multiple gunshot wounds outside a house party on Sept. 26 after a game by the U.
Police say the party was initially only for members of the football team, but other people came, including Buk. Utes Sports Properties is solely dedicated to representing the University of Utah, a partnership introduced in March 2017. The BYU Cougars are anxiously awaiting the release of updated college football playoff rankings to learn which bowl game they will play in. Utah, after starting the season 1-2, caught fire in the second half of the season, winning 6 straight to end the season and snagging the school's first-ever Pac-12 football title and an automatic bid to the Rose Bowl. Of course, the Utes were inspired and motivated to honor their fallen teammates Ty Jordan and Aaron Lowe, who were both killed in separate firearm-related incidents.
A switch to Cam Rising as quarterback also provided a big boost in turning the season around. PASADENA, Calif. – The Utah football program has already had a magical season, winning its first-ever Pac-12 title in the memory of two fallen teammates. On Saturday, the No. 11-ranked Utes will attempt to put a cherry on top of their 2021 campaign by snagging a Rose Bowl victory on the first day of 2022.
The "Utes" nickname comes from the Ute tribe, from which the state of Utah derives its name. From 1922 until 1971, the Utes lost to BYU five times, won 38 times, with four ties. From 1972, Edwards' first year as head coach, to 1992, Utah went 2–19 against BYU. 2021 saw BYU snap its nine game losing streak to Utah by a score of in the Cougars favor.
