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The road map for Utah’s second campaign in the Big 12 Conference has arrived.

After a lackluster inaugural season in its new league — the Utes went just 2-7 after being projected to win the conference in the Big 12 media poll — Utah is looking for some redemption in 2025 with a completely revamped offense featuring New Mexico quarterback Devon Dampier and Washington State running back Wayshawn Parker.

The Utes now know when — and where — they’re playing conference games in 2025, with the Big 12 releasing this year’s schedule Tuesday morning.

Utah will face some of the projected top teams in the conference, including BYU, Kansas State, Texas Tech and Arizona State in what looks to be another challenging Big 12 slate.

Here are three takeaways from the Utes’ 2025 schedule.

A fun — and challenging — home schedule

Utah fans should be excited about this year’s home schedule, which features five home conference games, including some of the projected top teams in the league.

The Utes are set to play six games at Rice-Eccles Stadium, and thanks to a nonconference schedule that sees them open the season at UCLA and travel to Wyoming, five of those games will be against Big 12 foes.

The conference opener against Texas Tech will be a good measuring stick for the Utes, as the Red Raiders look to build upon an 8-5 season. When accounting for high school recruits and transfers, 247Sports ranked the Red Raiders as having the No. 1 2025 class in the conference, bolstered by North Carolina offensive tackle Howard Sampson, and Georgia Tech edge rusher Romello Height, who are both top-30 transfer portal pickups.

Utah also welcomes last year’s Big 12 winner, Arizona State, and Colorado and Deion Sanders. The Utes finish off the home slate with trips from Cincinnati and Kansas State — the Wildcats are always in the mix to win the conference, and this year should be no different.

A season-defining stretch

Every season, there’s a stretch of the schedule that has the potential to make or break a season, and this year, that comes in October for Utah.

After opening Big 12 play vs. Texas Tech and at West Virginia, the Utes head into their first of two bye weeks, and it comes at a crucial time.

Following the bye week, Utah welcomes Arizona State to Rice-Eccles Stadium for a key conference showdown. Though the Big 12 champs don’t have superstar running back Cam Skattebo anymore, they return quarterback Sam Leavitt and receiver Jordan Tyson, along with a good chunk of last year’s starters on both sides of the ball, and should be right back in the mix for another Big 12 championship.

The Utes then head to Provo for the always-intense rivalry game against a BYU team that returns a lot of production — including quarterback Jake Retzlaff and running back LJ Martin — from last year’s 11-2 team and will be tough to beat at LaVell Edwards Stadium.

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Utah finishes off the stretch with a home game against Colorado, which enters the season with some question marks, but a lot of talent, after its top two players (CB/WR Travis Hunter and QB Shedeur Sanders) entered the NFL draft. The main storyline in Boulder will be centered on who will replace Sanders as the new signal-caller — four-star freshman Julian Lewis, or Liberty senior transfer Kaidon Salter, who threw for 1,886 yards and 15 touchdowns and added 587 yards and seven scores on the ground.

Making matters even more challenging for the Utes is the fact that both Arizona State and Colorado have bye weeks ahead of their trips to Salt Lake City.

If Utah wants to be in the Big 12 title race at the end of the season, it has to ace this stretch of the schedule.

Rivalry game continues to move earlier in the season

When Utah and BYU were previously in the same conference (WAC, Mountain West, etc.), the annual rivalry game was always played as the final regular-season game for both teams.

When the Utes moved to the Pac-12 and BYU went independent, the rivalry game was moved to September during nonconference play, but when the two schools reunited in the Big 12, the prevailing thought was that the rivalry game would return to its rightful place at the end of the season.

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Through two seasons, that has not been the case.

Last year’s game — a 22-21 Cougar win — was played on Nov. 9, and this year’s game is even earlier, being played on Oct. 18. It will be the fourth conference game in 2025 for the Utes, who head to Provo the week after hosting Arizona State. The Cougars, meanwhile, head to Tucson to play Arizona the week prior to the rivalry showdown.

The Big 12’s reasoning behind spreading out the rivalry games — the league’s only rivalry matchup played on the last weekend of the season is Arizona-Arizona State — is for each rivalry game to have its own spotlight (and not compete with the likes of other rivalry games for TV ratings), but it would make the Utah-BYU game a little more special to be played in the final weekend of the season — especially if conference title hopes are on the line.

In case you missed it

The Runnin’ Utes enter a crucial stretch of the Big 12 schedule this week. Here’s a look at what Utah showed in the first half of Big 12 play, and what lies ahead for it for the rest of the season.

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