BYU, Utah Football Meet in Clash Everyone Predicted, Just in Reverse

The Utes opened their first Big 12 season as favorites, but it is the Cougars who have soared to an unbeaten record as the in-state rivals meet for the first time in three years.

BYU Cougars safety Tanner Wall, left, and Crew Wakley celebrate an interception against the Arizona Wildcats. / Rob Gray-Imagn Images

It has been a strange few weeks in Utah.

There’s a new NHL team which rather miraculously appeared, from a desert of all places, to capture the attention of locals. Even Mother Nature is on the fritz—with fall winding up a mere afterthought—as temperatures hovering in the 80s just two weeks ago gave way to a snowstorm across the Wasatch Front on Tuesday. 

Maybe the surest sign of abnormality in the Beehive State has been the return of the most angst-ridden weekend on the state’s sports calendar—the “Holy War.” Families are once again split by divided loyalties. Bumper stickers have gotten a bit of extra shine. With greater consistency, red and blue sweatshirts dot the aisles of grocery stores and envelope malls like a bag of patriotic M&Ms.

The annual clash between the BYU Cougars and Utah Utes, however, doesn’t look anything like the matchup that was anticipated months ago when it was slotted onto the schedule after a three-year break.  

There’s a national title contender involved just like everyone expected, but it’s not the team anybody tabbed. Even odder, the quarterback taking a starring role Saturday is not the one who appeared in local television ads until recently, but rather a Jewish signal-caller making converts of a different kind at the school sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Strange is just one way to sum it up.

“The seasons have gone in completely different directions from what was anticipated at the onset. I guess that shows those preseason rankings and thoughts don’t mean a whole lot,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham quipped this week. “You have to go out and play the games and things happen during the course of the season that alter the paths of teams. That’s what happened this year.”

It has been something of a Freaky Friday situation, the football fates of the two programs separated by fewer than 50 miles going in fully opposite directions this year.

The Utes were the preseason favorite to win their new league, the Big 12, and widely considered—both internally and externally—to have a good shot at making the College Football Playoff in the first year of an expanded field. Like other contenders, preparations for hosting a first-round game at Rice-Eccles Stadium were discussed by the administration, and local sports talk radio didn’t hold back dreaming about the possibility of one of the toughest venues in the country hosting a blueblood for the playoff in chilly winter weather. 

What could go wrong at Utah since has, though.

Veteran quarterback Cam Rising made just three starts after sitting out all of last season redshirting from a knee injury suffered in the Rose Bowl. He missed several games initially due to a hand injury, and then was lost for the season after a leg injury in a road game at Arizona State on Oct. 11. The offense has been anemic beyond the season opener against Southern Utah, ranking 105th across FBS in scoring and second to last in the Big 12 in third downs converted. After six years calling plays, coordinator Andy Ludwig stepped down on Oct. 20 after falling 13–7 to the TCU Horned Frogs, and the program is now in the midst of a four-game losing streak (the longest since 2017).

Utah quarterback Isaac Wilson had to step in for Rising this season. / Rob Gray-Imagn Images

Perfectly balancing out the nightmare in Salt Lake City has been a dream season down in Provo. 

The Cougars are 8–0 for just the fifth time in school history and remain one of just five teams in the country without a loss. They checked in at No. 9 in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s first ranking of the season—good enough for a top-four seed and potential first-round bye—and could rightfully claim to be one of the most improved programs in the country after a disappointing 5–7 debut last season as a power-conference team that featured five losses by double digits in league play.

If they triumph at Rice-Eccles for the first time since 2006 on Saturday night, it would ensure the team fully doubled its preseason win total projection of 4.5 from the sportsbooks and keep BYU atop the Big 12 standings in which it was initially picked to finish 13th.  

“In college football, especially as you get toward the end in November, it becomes a test on how you’re going to finish,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. “You can’t bank on anything—college football is unpredictable. There’s a lot of parity in this conference, and we’ve said that from the very beginning.”

One of the driving forces of the navy blue-and-white resurgence has been the play of QB Jake Retzlaff. A junior college transfer from California, Retzlaff went winless in his four starts for an injury-ravaged team last year but has significantly elevated his game this season. His yards per attempt have nearly doubled, and he’s thrown for 18 touchdowns—one more than the team had all of last year. 

Retzlaff has been clutch, too. He led a fourth-quarter, go-ahead scoring drive to help beat the SMU Mustangs, and went 75 yards in 62 seconds before tossing the winning touchdown to Darius Lassiter in a memorable win over the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Throw in being the Cougars’ second-leading rusher, and the junior is no longer just an intriguing story to outsiders as the first Jewish quarterback to play at BYU, but the driving force that could help capture the program’s first conference title since 2007. 

Also helping is a defensive resurgence under Sitake and coordinator Jay Hill, 49, who shockingly suffered a heart attack just two days before the season opener. It was a scary moment for all involved, but the former Weber State head coach recovered quickly and the event brought the team closer together. Despite not taking on a ton of transfers this summer, BYU is in the top 20 in points allowed (up from 86th in FBS a year ago) and has one of the stingiest pass defenses in the country. Remarkably, the team’s 14 interceptions have come from 11 different players to underscore its depth. 

On paper, that would seemingly give a big edge to the visitors in the first Holy War that comes with matching Big 12 logos on the two uniforms. In practice though, this rivalry has been anything but straightforward. The last four meetings in Salt Lake City have seen an average margin of victory of just over a field goal and included one game that even saw fans storm the field three different times. 

“There’s a lot of emotions and there’s a lot of parity between the teams. It doesn’t really matter a lot of the records,” Sitake said. “I think there’s a lot of pride that goes into both sides and tradition. We’re going to get their best effort.”

There are plenty of players facing off against old teammates from high school, and the crossover on the two coaching staffs adds another layer that few series can match in college football. 

Sitake, left and Whittingham have long ties to the state and each other’s programs. / Jeff Swinger-Imagn Images

Whittingham is a former BYU linebacker who was a star player under the legendary LaVell Edwards, while Sitake spent nearly a decade in red as an assistant under his good friend Whittingham. Both of the Cougars coordinators coached at each school, plus both Hill and defensive line coach Sione Po’uha played in the game as former Utes. Five Utah assistants are alums with plenty of experience playing the school down south, too, including defensive coordinator (and head coach-in-waiting) Morgan Scalley. 

Perhaps that is why, despite entering with momentum heading in opposite directions, BYU is favored by just four points in a series that has seen Utah win nine of the last 10 meetings.

“That’s unusual and hasn’t occurred for quite a while,” noted Whittingham, who will be in charge of the program for the 250th time on Saturday yet has lost only lost once at Rice-Eccles to his alma mater across 20 seasons. “But that’s our driving force.”

It’s a strange position to be in for the Utes coming into a pivotal meeting on the gridiron with BYU. But, Holy War or not, perhaps it is also par for the course around town at the moment.