The recent college realignment movements that have shook the college football world leave Utah athletic director Mark Harlan with a dilemma.
The Utes will be joining the Big 12 Conference next year, along with three other Pac-12 members, and Utah has already filled out its 2024 nonconference football schedule.
The problem is, two of the scheduled opponents are Big 12 schools — the Utes currently are contracted to play BYU, Baylor and Southern Utah as nonleague games, per FBSchedules.com.
With just over a year until the 2024 season, Harlan — like many of the athletic directors at schools impacted by the 10 Power Five schools who will be switching conferences next year — is left scrambling trying to find alternative nonconference opponents to fill out a full schedule.
Harlan told KSL Sports on Wednesday that one idea the school is looking into is making the game against Baylor a nonconference contest.
“There are things that are a little more in front of us like football scheduling that you have to literally start tackling now,” Harlan told “Unrivaled” hosts Alex Kirry and Scott Mitchell.
“We are in a unique situation where we have two Big 12 teams on our schedule next year with Baylor and BYU. We have to find solutions there because they both are league games. However, we are looking at Baylor possibly being a nonconference game because of where we are in the calendar. It is darn near impossible to find two opponents that quickly.”
Nearly a decade ago, Baylor and Utah announced a two-game series. The first game is being played this year, when Utah travels to Baylor on Sept. 9.
The second game was scheduled for Sept. 14, 2024, at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
Kansas State is reportedly looking into a similar possibility with a scheduled series against Arizona, according to The Kansas City Star. Arizona, along with Utah, Arizona State and Colorado, is also joining the Big 12 next year.
Kansas State and Arizona have a two-game series scheduled for 2024 and 2025.
“Because that Arizona one is so close we are going to see if we can keep that as a potential nonconference game,” Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor told The Kansas City Star. “We at least want that to be part of the conversation because it is so soon.”
As for the BYU-Utah 2024 game, Cougars athletic director Tom Holmoe told the Deseret News he is exploring options to fill the vacant slot in BYU’s nonconference portion of its schedule created by Utah joining the Big 12.
“There are very few games that are even available when you are talking 13 months out,” Holmoe told Deseret News contributor Dave McCann during the “Y’s Guys” podcast. “That one is going to be tricky because there are literally only four or five games that realistically could even be played.”