Month: July 2025

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — After two stellar seasons with the University of Utah, Core Jackson is now a New York Yankee.

Jackson, 21, was drafted by the Yankees in the fifth round of the 2025 MLB Draft. He was picked 164th overall and is the 79th all-time draft selection in Utah’s history and the third by the Yankees after Oliver Dunn in 2019 and Steve Rudanovich in 1965.

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The Wyoming, Ontario, native heads to the big leagues after successfully helping Utah transition from the Pac-12 to the Big 12. He was voted to the first-team all-conference in both conferences in 2024 and 2025, respectively, and started in all 100 games he played in.

Jake Retzlaff officially withdraws from BYU

He was named a semifinalist for the Brooks Wallace Award in 2025, a college baseball accolade awarded to the nation’s top shortstop. He led the league defensively in assists at 163 and had a hand in 38 double plays, the fifth most in the Pac-12. On the offense, Jackson led Utah in nearly every statistic, including all three “slash categories” of batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage with .364 / .445 / .641.

He scored 61 runs, breaking into the top 10 for a season in Utah history, and stole 20 bases, the ninth-most by a Utah player. He hit .363 in his time with the Utes, tallying 34 doubles, four triples, 16 home runs, 85 RBIs and 122 runs scored.

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Jackson heads to the Yankees, having entered the Utes’ leaderboards for batting average (9th at .363), on-base percentage (10th at .455), and stolen bases (10th at 37).

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 Sports) – Even though it was a tough season for the Utes baseball team, two players heard their names called at the Major League Draft on Monday.

Shortstop Core Jackson was taken in in the fifth round by the New York Yankees, while pitcher Merrit Jones went to the Minnesota Twins in the 14th round.

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Jackson is the highest drafted Utah player since DaShawn Keirsey was selected in the fourth round of the 2018 draft by Minnesota.

Utes looking to bounce back this season

Jackson was voted first-team all-conference both in the Pac-12 (2024) and Big 12 (2025), starting all 100 games that he appeared in. He hit .364 this past season with 12 home runs and 44 RBI. As a junior, Jackson hit .363.

Jones made 46 appearances in his three seasons with the Utes, including 40 starts. Jones ranks sixth in career starts and 10^th in strikeouts (175).

Jones went 4-6 in 15 appearances during the 2025 season. He threw 79 innings and had 58 strikeouts. He went seven innings in a road win over a ranked Arizona club, sealing a series victory for the Utes over the eventual Big 12 Tournament champions. He also was the victor against an eventual NCAA Regional participant in TCU.

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Former Utes star Jakob Poeltl signs $104 million extension

Salt Lake Community College pitcher Jaxon Grossman was taken in the 16th round by the Texas Rangers. Grossman was 6-0 for the national champion Bruins with an ERA of 5.15 this past season in 14 appearances with 9 starts.

BYU pitcher Garrison Sumner went in the 20th round to the Boston Red Sox. Sumner was 3-3 for the Cougars in 2025 with an ERA of 8.18 in 14 appearances with 11 starts.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

UTAH (ABC4) — Much of Utah will see critical fire weather conditions tomorrow, due to dry thunderstorms and high winds.

Utah Fire Info announced that a red flag warning has been issued for much of Utah, as critical fire weather conditions leads to increased fire danger. The warning will be in effect on July 15th, from 12 p.m. to 11 p.m.

IN DEPTH: What is a red flag warning anyway? Wildland firefighting terminologies explained

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), parts of Central and Northern Utah will see dry thunderstorms that may also bring “gusty, erratic outflow winds and frequent lightning”. Southwest Utah may see winds with gusts up to 30 mph that “will combine with relative humidity levels near 10% below 8000 feet”.

Courtesy: National Weather Service

While NWS has designated the weather risk as ‘minor’, they note that the weather conditions may mean that fires may spread rapidly and there may be extreme fire behavior.

Individuals are encouraged to follow local fire restrictions.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

In a game that disappointed Utah Jazz fans with the lack of Ace Bailey playing, there was a nice showing from Cody Williams and Kyle Filipowski in the Jazz’s 103-93 loss to the Golden State Warriors.

Kyle Filipowski playing well is not a big surprise with him having an impressive summer league so far. In this one, Filipowski had 21 points and 6 rebounds. He continues to put up numbers and is likely worthy of being sent home. The Jazz may need him for the simple fact that they need bigs on the floor. Filipowski has not defended the rim well in this summer league but he showing some nice signs on the perimeter defensivly. There may be a world where he solidifies his position at the power forward, and it becomes a staple to his game.

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I’m trying not to overreact, but Cody Williams is getting better. In the second half in this one, Cody Williams really found his groove and looked comfortable driving to the basket and scoring. Williams is showing signs that he’s not a player to give up on … at all. Williams had 22 points on 8/17 shooting from the field. He only shot 1/6 from three, which makes that 2PT FG% really high. He also threw 4 assists and grabbed 3 steals. He’s looking like a player who’s getting more and more comfortable and confident. It’s just summer league, but this is exactly what you want to see from Williams. Probably the most surprising thing is how good he looks handing the ball. Williams is driving to the basket and not turning the ball over at a high rate. The biggest thing for him right now is just shooting the three. His shot is not quite there yet and will take time, but that’s something the Jazz have and can allow him a chance to develop.

It’s a game day tomorrow, and we’ll see if Ace Bailey plays. If not, we get a chance to see if Cody Williams can keep up this level of play.

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On July 1, college sports entered a new frontier.

For the first time ever, universities began directly paying their players as part of the “House v. NCAA” settlement. The settlement allows each university to pay its student-athletes up to $20.5 million per year, which works out to approximately 22% of the average athletic department revenue at Power Four schools. The vast majority of that money will go to pay athletes in football and men’s basketball, the two most revenue-generating sports for most universities.

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With the revenue-sharing agreement comes a crackdown on NIL (name, image and likeness) deals. Prior to revenue sharing, the NIL was the Wild West, and essentially boiled down to pay for play.

The new system attempts to make NIL what it was originally intended to be — sponsorship opportunities for athletes at a true market value.

“Biggest issue is we’ve got to have somewhat of a level playing field with the NIL space, I shouldn’t say NIL, but with what we’re paying them.”

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham

Every NIL deal will now be sent through a clearinghouse managed by accounting firm Deloitte, which will assess those deals and has the ability to approve or deny each NIL deal according to if it meets “fair market value.”

Already, the system is working, sending some NIL deals back for reworking — including a few at the University of Utah.

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“I will say with the settlement, with the cap, with NIL Go and our athletes have been submitting on NIL Go. Since the settlement was decided three or four weeks ago, the turnaround has been pretty quick,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said in an interview on ESPN 700.

“We’ve had all but a few approved here at Utah, the ones that haven’t been approved, we go back and we help the student-athlete restructure to make sure it’s in that range of compensation.”

From the beginning, Harlan has said Utah will be “all-in” on revenue sharing. Men’s basketball player Keanu Dawes was the first to receive a revenue-sharing deal from the university, with others, including football players, following shortly after.

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Utah was able to retain key players like offensive tackles Spencer Fano and Caleb Lomu, cornerback Smith Snowden and others, and got New Mexico quarterback Devon Dampier and Washington State running back Wayshawn Parker out of the transfer portal.

“We’re excited to be able to, again, to have a dramatic increase for what football had,” Harlan said. “You don’t retain two first-rounders (Fano and Lomu) and guys like Smith Snowden and others if you don’t have capital and great donors involved. It’s never enough because there’s always someone that’s got more, obviously Texas Tech.”

Texas Tech, as Harlan mentioned, has made waves in the past year, signing one of the top transfer classes this offseason, including Stanford edge rusher David Bailey and North Carolina offensive tackle Howard Sampson, spending over $10 million, according to The Athletic.

Texas Tech followed that up by signing five-star high school offensive tackle Felix Ojo, who will receive “an annual compensation of $775,000 per year for three years from Tech’s revenue-sharing pool,” according to The Athletic.

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There was a mad dash to sign and pay out NIL deals before July 1; deals paid out thereafter would be subject to review by Deloitte. One NIL deal platform, Opendorse, had its biggest day in company history on June 30, processing nearly $20 million in payments.

“There’s teams that are front-loading all the extra money they had prior to the rev share kicking in,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “We got teams spending supposedly $50 million or more on players, and that’s five, six times what we got.”

The Houston Chronicle reported that Texas will spend $35-$40 million on its 2025 roster, between revenue sharing and NIL deals, many of which were signed before the NIL clearinghouse went into effect.

“Biggest issue is we’ve got to have somewhat of a level playing field with the NIL space, I shouldn’t say NIL, but with what we’re paying them,” Whittingham said.

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“Bottom line, they’re professionals, they’re getting paid like professionals and we’ve got to get a handle on that. We can’t have X amount of schools paying, spending $50 million on rosters and the rest of us $12 million … There’s about 12 teams that’ll have a chance to win it all every year and that’s it. So I would say leveling the playing field with a salary cap, again, back to the NFL model, and making things more uniform. It works in the NFL, so why can’t it work at this level?”

The big question around college sports is this — will the revenue-sharing cap and “true market value NIL” bring a sense of parity in terms of what teams can spend?

That’s the hope — but Whittingham is unsure if it will work in practice.

“I don’t think the rev share is an equalizer or is going to be the equalizer that everyone thinks it’s going to be because they’re going to circumvent it,” Whittingham said.

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“They’ll find ways around it just like everyone always has. And so you’re still going to see a big disparity in the opportunity to build rosters. But again, until we get to an NFL model, where there’s a salary cap and that’s it, and if you break that cap, then you get huge penalties — I mean huge penalties, then it’s not going to work.”

Fueled by the infusion of money into the space, the unlimited transfer portal has turned college football from a place where players would be developed for three or four years at one school into one in which half or more of every annual roster is comprised of new players.

“Instead of 20 or 30 guys turning over each year, it’s 60 guys. Half your roster is new,” Whittingham said.

The new age, where players can transfer without penalty, has both helped and hurt the Utes. This offseason, Utah lost star defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa to BYU and star cornerback Cam Calhoun to Alabama. After spring practices, promising receiver Zacharyus Williams took off for USC.

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Meanwhile, Utah has used the transfer portal to its advantage with players like Dampier, Parker, Cal receiver Tobias Merriweather and cornerbacks Don Saunders (Texas A&M) and Blake Cotton (UC Davis).

Even players not in the transfer portal are being contacted to play for other schools.

In a video published by the Daily Universe’s Sam Foster, Snowden replied to a question about if BYU reached out to him this offseason.

“It wasn’t directly to me,” Snowden replied. “… BYU wasn’t the only school (to reach out), it’s kind of what the name of the game is right, with the transfer portal. I wouldn’t say that it was any tampering type thing, it was more of agents and all that type of stuff.”

Nowhere else in sports is every player a free agent after every season, except in college sports right now. But after the NCAA and the Department of Justice reached a settlement in 2024, the NCAA was permanently barred from restricting a player’s eligibility. In the previous iteration of the rules, athletes had to sit out a year before joining their new team.

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A solution to all of it could be collective bargaining, just like what happens in all of professional sports, but the implementation could be extremely difficult.

Collective bargaining could make players employees of the schools, set a clear total salary cap and perhaps create contracts that lock a player into a school for a certain number of years.

Nearly every Big 12 coach at media days told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger that they support employment/collective bargaining.

“I think it’s heading that way,” Whittingham said of collective bargaining.

“I don’t know if I support or don’t support it. I know that the system we have in place is not sustainable and even with the rev share and the changes that have been made, I’m still not buying the fact that it’s the answer.”

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Whittingham supports going to an NFL minor league model, he said this week.

“I realize when you say, well, college football’s not the NFL, but the NFL has been doing some good things for a lot of years and we ought to take some pages from them on how to implement salary cap, collective bargaining if it comes to that,” Whittingham said.

“I think that’s the only real way to get a grasp and a handle on things. As distasteful as it might sound to some people, I think an NFL minor league model is the best direction to head personally. That’s my own opinion.”

Whittingham has long said that there will eventually be a “super conference,” and he doubled down on that this week.

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“I still believe that super conference concept is on its way. I really buy into that and I think that there’ll be X amount of teams that break away. They’ll have their own conference commissioner and they’ll do things the way they want to do and everyone else is going to kind of have to fend for themselves,” Whittingham said.

Another avenue for change in college sports would be congressional action.

On Thursday, members of the House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan bill — the SCORE act — that would make conferences exempt from antitrust lawsuits and would let the NCAA once again set parameters “for the manner in which a student-athlete may transfer between institutions, if such rules provide that at least one occasion each student-athlete may transfer between institutions and be immediately eligible.”

It would also codify into law the House settlement, including the current 22% revenue-sharing cap and the new NIL rules. NIL deals would need to serve a “valid business purpose” and have fair market value compensation.

“Instead of 20 or 30 guys turning over each year, it’s 60 guys. Half your roster is new.”

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham

The bill wouldn’t advance collective bargaining, in fact, it would prevent college athletes from being employees of their schools, conferences or an athletic association

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The bill would also provide protections for athletes, such as requiring schools to provide “coverage of medical expenses for athletic injuries for up to 3 years post-enrollment,” and would cap agent fees at 5%.

It would also establish a process for registering and certifying agents and “setting parameters for the ability of member institutions to negotiate with agents who are not registered under such process.”

Capping agent fees is something Whittingham is in favor of.

“I think it would help the players. Some of these guys are taking 20, 25% from these guys. That’s outlandish. It should be 3 to 5%, just like the NFL is, and certification would be certainly, absolutely a step in the right direction.”

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One thing is clear from talking to coaches across the Big 12 — the current system is unsustainable.

Whether through the new NIL rules and revenue-sharing cap being tightly enforced, collective bargaining or an act of Congress, the powers that be feel like change needs to come to college sports.

A rapidly growing and still-uncontained fire that’s already destroyed five buildings in eastern Utah is fast approaching the state line with Colorado.

The fire first broke out on Thursday, north of Utah State Route 46 and southeast of Moab, Utah, and could reach Paradox, Colorado, in Montrose County on Sunday. The fire was 8,925 acres with 0% containment Sunday morning, according to Utah Fire Info, a task force comprising state and federal agencies.

“Yesterday, fire behavior increased dramatically on the northern side of the fire perimeter due to very strong, terrain-driven winds through the Hangdog Creek area,” Utah Fire Info wrote on Facebook.

“As the fire burned north into the 2002 Hangdog Fire scar, fire intensity was reduced and helicopters and airtankers were able to effectively drop water and retardant on the flames.  Fire activity on the southern edge was less active and the fire continues to hold north of Highway 46.”  

Over 300 firefighters, 10 fire engines, three helicopters, a plane, and other resources are being used to fight the fire.

Hot, dry, and windy conditions are complicating the efforts, and Montrose County is already experiencing multiple wildfires in the area.

As of noon on Sunday, firefighters were battling the Sowbelly Fire at 2,251 acres, the South Rim Fire at 3,556 acres, the Wright Draw Fire at 160 acres, and the Turner Gulch Fire at 512 acres, all in or near Montrose County. The cause of those Colorado fires was all determined to be from lightning strikes but the cause of the Deer Creek Fire was still under investigation.

You can see a list of active wildfires in the U.S. here.

In 1848, when the newly arrived Mormon pioneers were ready to harvest their first crop necessary for surviving the coming winter, millions of crickets descended on their fields and gardens, threatening the settlers’ survival. The pioneers responded immediately, doing everything in their power to fight the crickets: stomping on them, burying them in trenches and attempting to drive them away with smoke, fire and loud noises. But no matter how many crickets were destroyed, they kept coming in huge black waves.

Then, in what many considered a miracle, tens of thousands of seagulls from the Great Salt Lake descended on the landscape, devouring the invading insects and saving the harvest and the people. Towards the end of his life, church President Joseph F. Smith recalled how pioneers were “literally preserved from starvation by the welcome visits and persistent efforts in the destruction of the devouring hordes by these beautiful winged saviors.”

Since that historic time, Utahns have honored the seagull, erecting a monument to it on Temple Square in 1913 and making it the official state bird in 1955.

By an ironic turn of fate, today, because of the shrinking Great Salt Lake, it is the seagulls as well as the people who are in danger due to water diversion and drought.

The lake has lost two-thirds of its water and more than half of its surface area. A new scientific report predicts that within the next few years, the lake could reach a point of no return. The lake area, which includes 800 square miles of dry, exposed sediment, releases toxic dust laced with arsenic, mercury and other toxins into the air, which is breathed by every creature who lives in the area — and, if nothing is changed, every creature who will live here in the future. That means that our children and grandchildren and the generations who come after them will be victims of what one source has called “an environmental nuclear bomb.”

While some may consider that an exaggeration, consider the following:

• Pollution from the lake is currently causing significant increases in cardiac and lung disease, cancer and other deleterious diseases, as well as increases in premature births and deaths.
• More disturbing is the research predicting that unless the lake is saved, the entire populace living in proximity to the lake will lose an average of more than two years of longevity! Imagine all 2,800,000 people living along and just beyond the Wasatch Front losing an average of two years of life! That equals 5,600,000 lost years or 56,000 centuries of human life!
• The fallout from the present state of the lake is expected to cause billions of dollars in financial losses, including to tourism, tech, ski, health and other industries as well as to property values and population growth.

Put simply, if we don’t act, as the lake continues to dry up, it will increasingly poison our air, shorten our lives, devastate wildlife, negatively impact business and industry, and leave an irreversible scar on the landscape.

What can we do? According to Brigham Daniels, Director of the University of Utah’s Great Salt Lake Project, “The Great Salt Lake is really presenting a question to us: ‘Which future do we want?’ And because its challenges are caused, by and large, by people, we actually have an opportunity to navigate toward human-led solutions.”

Those solutions include water conservation, better water management, increasing water flow, community awareness and perhaps, especially, every citizen becoming engaged in some way, however modest, in helping to solve the problem.

Fortunately, as the seagulls once saved the people, the people now have the opportunity to save the seagulls (and other birds and living creatures) as well as themselves. One important difference: The seagulls saved the people based on instinct; we can actually choose whether to save the seagulls — and ourselves.

The pioneers once saw the gulls as heaven-sent. Perhaps that was true. But miracles don’t happen without faith, and faith without action is not really faith. July 24 is Pioneer Day. Whether you are a descendant of pioneers or not, whether you believe in miracles or not, believe you can make a difference and do something to save a lake whose future is critical to our future.

Jen Larrick didn’t try to hide the disappointment Saturday night, interrupting her postgame media availability to cast her gaze to the other side of TCO Stadium where the Utah United were celebrating their 1-0 victory over her Minnesota Aurora in the USL W League national semifinals.

“It’s hard to watch them dancing right now,” said the first-year Aurora head coach, whose team finished its season 12-1-2 overall.

“We work so hard to go undefeated and it stings when you lose and don’t get a chance again.”

Instead, it is Utah in its inaugural season who will go on to host defending league champion NC Courage U23 — which defeated Asheville City SC 2-1 in Saturday’s other semifinal — in the national title game on July 19.

A goal by Utah’s Ellie Walbruch in extra time at the end of the first half proved the difference, lifting her team to victory before a crowd of 5,607 gathered on a hazy Eagan night in which the poor air quality from Canadian wildfires necessitated regular hydration breaks.

Aurora defender Charley Boone and her teammates were trying to advance to the franchise’s first national championship game appearance since the team’s inaugural season in 2022.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Boone said. “You can almost taste (a berth in the national championship game). But hopefully this is just fuel for next season.”

Utah — which entered play leading the league in goals — controlled the tempo for much of the first half, keeping the pressure on Minnesota goalkeeper Taylor Kane and the Aurora defense.

“I think we started a little junkier than I anticipated,” Larrick said. “We’re used to this home crowd, so usually it rattles the other team a little more than it rattles us. But we were a little off during the first 10 minutes.”

Yet, Aurora forward Ava Westlund started to assert herself as play went on, firing off a shot from just to the left of United goalkeeper Taylor Rath, then breaking free in front of the Utah net before Rath stepped up to make another save.

“I thought those were our best chances of the night,” Larrick said. “On a different day, I think Westy puts at least one of those, if not two, away. But they’re people. They’re humans and she was giving us all she can.”

That meant it was Walbruch who scored first, beating Kane to the ball and driving it into the net to put the United up by a goal at halftime. It marked just the second goal the Aurora had surrendered at home all season.

“I’m not going to lie, it was hard to have that happen right before halftime,” Boone said. “But we tried to use that as fuel going into the (second) half.”

The goal meant the Aurora found themselves trailing, a position in which a team that had allowed just four goals all season entering Saturday’s game, hasn’t found itself in very often.

“It’s definitely a bit of a mental battle,” Boone said. “You go from being level with a team to being below them a little bit, so it’s always in the back of your mind that you have to score. The pressure is on.”

Yet Minnesota did not go quietly, continuing to create opportunities — including three shots that sailed high of the net in extra time. But Boone and company could not find a way to get the ball past Rath.

“We were building,” Boone said. “I think if you gave us another five minutes, we would have created a few more chances for ourselves. We just ran out of time.”