One of the drawbacks for some local college football fans two years ago when BYU was invited to join the Big 12 was the loss of the Cougars’ annual rivalry game with Utah State, the Battle for the Old Wagon Wheel.
Could that always-heated game come rolling back, courtesy of Utah’s entrance into the Big 12 in 2024?
The Utes, along with Arizona and Arizona State, were welcomed into the Big 12 on Friday as the Pac-12 crumbled with the losses of Oregon and Washington to the Big Ten.
“I am grateful to Big 12 leadership for seeing this through. The conference keeps getting stronger, and we are thankful to add more Big 12 rivals in closer proximity.” — BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe on Utah, Arizona and Arizona State joining the Big 12
USC and UCLA started the exodus last year, and Colorado continued it last week.
As part of a lengthy statement in a school news release, University of Utah President Taylor Randall mentioned the resumption of the BYU-Utah football rivalry, which wasn’t played last year and is not scheduled to be played this year.
“Joining our Pac-12 and Association of American Universities peers from Colorado and Arizona is important to our mission and makes sense, as does, renewing our historic in-state rivalry with Brigham Young University,” Randall said.
As the dust settles on the most significant day in college football in quite some time, some fans have turned their attention to non-conference scheduling.
Utah and BYU were contracted to play each other in non-conference games six times between now and 2030, beginning Sept. 7, 2024 at Rice-Eccles Stadium. It is assumed that those six games, and one in 2029, when there is no BYU-Utah game on the slate, will become conference games and be played later in the year, rather in September.
And that means the Cougars and Utes will need to find additional non-conference opponents those years.
Arizona’s departure also affects BYU’s schedule in 2026 and 2027, as the Cougars and Wildcats were scheduled to meet in Provo on Sept. 12, 2026 and in Tucson on Sept. 11, 2027.
Both BYU and Utah have Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) schools on their non-conference schedules in 2024, which means whatever opponents they elect to fill in will have to come from the FBS ranks, as FBS teams are allowed just one FCS opponent a year when it comes to getting bowl eligible (six wins).
BYU hosts FCS Southern Illinois in its 2024 opener, while Utah hosts FCS Southern Utah. BYU’s other non-conference game in 2024 is at Wyoming on Sept. 14, a visit that BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe said last year is one the Cougars plan on fulfilling.
Utah theoretically could need two new non-conference opponents in 2024, as it is scheduled to host the Big 12’s Baylor on Sept. 14 of that year, and the schools will be league mates then.
Utah also has a home-and-home scheduled with fellow Big 12 newcomer Houston in 2026 and 2027. Obviously, with 16 teams in the Big 12 in 2024 and beyond, every team won’t be able to play every other team in the league in football, so there’s some wiggle room.
This year, for instance, BYU does not play Baylor, Houston, Kansas State and UCF. Its non-conference games are against Sam Houston and SUU and at Arkansas on Sept. 16.
Could Utah State, which was “disappointed to see the series go away for now,” in the words of then-AD John Hartwell in 2022, find its way back on BYU’s schedule? What about Utah’s? The Ags and Utes haven’t played since 2015, a 24-14 Utes win at Rice-Eccles.
When BYU and Utah State announced on May 12, 2022, within minutes of each other that their game scheduled for Sept. 29, 2022 at LaVell Edwards Stadium would be the last in the near future — due to BYU’s entrance into the Big 12 — BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe left open the possibility of getting the series back on the Cougars’ schedule down the road.
“We will continue to work together to play this in-state game again in the future,” Holmoe said is a school news release.
BYU has won 22 of the last 27 matchups, including a 38-26 victory last year.
While reaction to rival Utah’s entrance into the Big 12 has been decidedly mixed among BYU fans, the school’s administrators applauded the move late Friday night.
“I am grateful to Big 12 leadership for seeing this through,” Holmoe said. “The conference keeps getting stronger, and we are thankful to add more Big 12 rivals in closer proximity.”
Utah State wasn’t the only casualty of BYU’s move to the Big 12. The Cougars also had to cancel series and/or games with Boise State, Rice, Fresno State, UNLV, USC, Nevada, North Carolina State, Hawaii, Stanford and Miami.
Perhaps one or more of those games could be brought back to replace Utah and Arizona on the non-conference slate.
Last week, Troy announced on its website, according to FBSchedules.com, that BYU’s scheduled return visit in 2026 (for a 2020 game in Provo) has been rescheduled to Sept. 15, 2035.
Other non-conference FBS matchups that remain on BYU’s future schedules include East Carolina (2025), USF (2026), Ole Miss (2028, 2029), Virginia Tech (2030, 2033), Stanford (2031), Michigan State (2032), Coastal Carolina (2033) and Missouri (2035).