With Utah’s Big 12 championship game aspirations gone and its College Football Playoff hopes essentially squashed, the Utes’ postseason outlook more than likely …
With Utah’s Big 12 championship game aspirations gone and its College Football Playoff hopes essentially squashed, the Utes’ postseason outlook more than likely involves receiving an invitation to play in a bowl game.
Utah handled its business in its regular season finale with a 31-21 win over Kansas, improving to 10-2 while extending its win streak to five games. However, Arizona’s win over Arizona State on Black Friday sent Texas Tech and BYU to the conference title game for a rematch of a Nov. 8 contest the Red Raiders won, 29-7.
Since the Utes won’t be playing on conference championship week, their chances of earning an at-large bid into the College Football Playoff appear to be slim to none. Utah checked in at No. 15 in the penultimate CFP rankings on Tuesday, effectively eliminating the Utes from playoff contention.
Kyle Whittingham and company will still be paying close attention to College Football Playoff selection show on Sunday (10 a.m. MT, ESPN), as the matchups for the rest of the postseason’s bowl games are to be revealed after the 12-team bracket is announced.
Utah’s bowl game options are a bit different from most of the other teams in the Big 12. Due to bowl contracts that run through the 2025 season, former Pac-12 schools that are bowl-game eligible (Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Oregon, USC, Utah and Washington) and current Pac-12 constituent Washington State will be considered for bowl games that have Pac-12 affiliations.
Presuming Oregon is a lock for the College Football Playoff, seven former/current Pac-12 schools will be bowling this season.
That said, here’s a look at which bowl games Utah could be invited to.
The Alamo Bowl has often been considered among the top bowl games on the postseason slate given it has the potential to deliver an intriguing matchup every year. While the 12-team playoff could change that notion in the future, the recent history of the San Antonio-based event includes nine games between Associated Press Top 25 teams since 2015, with five of those contests being determined by seven points or less.
Checking in at No. 15 in the AP poll with 10 wins, Utah does present quite the case for being invited to play in the Alamo Bowl for the first time since 2019, when it lost 38-10 to a Sam Ehlinger-led Texas squad. However, No. 17 USC (9-3) is also an option among the former Pac-12 teams.
If No. 11 BYU doesn’t make the College Football Playoff, the Cougars are in play for back-to-back Alamo Bowl appearances as well. This time, though, it wouldn’t be a surprise if its organizers steered away from having two current Big 12 teams in the game like last season’s edition, which featured BYU knocking off Colorado in a 36-14 final.
The Holiday Bowl is set to feature the ACC in it for the fourth consecutive year after a six-year run of Big Ten-Pac-12 matchups.
Cal (7-5) would be a viable option based on geography, but similar to the logic applied to the Alamo Bowl, Holiday Bowl organizers might try to avoid pitting teams from the same conference against one another for the sake of variance. Georgia Tech (9-3), SMU (8-4) or Clemson (7-5) could represent the ACC instead.
From the Big 12, either one of the Arizona schools could be a better fit than Utah, which last appeared in the Holiday Bowl in 2018 when it lost 31-20 to Northwestern.
An invite to the Las Vegas Bowl would be Utah’s second trip to Allegiant Stadium for a postseason game in a three-year span, with its first coming in a 14-7 loss to Northwestern back in the 2023 Las Vegas Bowl.
The Utes’ potential return to Sin City could pit them against a Big Ten team like Iowa (8-4) or Nebraska (7-5). Of all the bowls mentioned on this list, the ESPN-owned Las Vegas Bowl is the likeliest one for Utah.
It’s also worth mentioning the Utes signed up to play Miami in ESPN Events’ 2027 Vegas Kickoff Classic at Allegiant Stadium in the summer of 2024.
The fifth installment of the Los Angeles Bowl could be the most interesting one to date, depending on the two teams its organizers are able to invite. The previous editions didn’t feature a Pac-12 team with more than seven wins going into it, though there are a few eight- and nine-win squads, plus a talented 10-2 UNLV squad from the Mountain West, that would make for quite a postseason matchup.
Cal and Washington State (6-6) will likely be considered as well. Utah, meanwhile, probably has better odds of attending one of the other aforementioned bowl games on the list.
Current and former Pac-12 schools have been on the losing side of the past four Sun Bowls, with the conference’s last win coming in 2019 when Jayden Daniels and Arizona State beat Florida State, 20-14.
The Sun Devils (8-4) could be in for a return trip to El Paso, Texas, for the 2025 version. Utah hasn’t played in the Sun Bowl since Star Lotulelei and company beat Georgia Tech, 30-27, in 2011.
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Source: Utah News