For the third straight year, the BYU-Utah football showdown will take place in the middle of the season.
The Big 12 Conference released its 2026 football schedule Wednesday morning, with the Cougars and Utes set to face off in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 7.
In 2025, BYU hosted Utah in Provo on Oct. 18, and the two rivals played on Nov. 9 back in 2024 for their first meeting as Big 12 foes.
While the 2024 and 2025 contests resulted in memorable BYU victories, many fans have criticized the Big 12’s decision to schedule such compelling rivalry action in the middle of the season rather than as the regular-season finale, considering the final week of the college football season is widely known as “Rivalry Week.”
During BYU’s and Utah’s joint 12-season tenure in the Mountain West Conference between 1999-2010, the Cougars and Utes battled in the regular-season finale every year except for 2001 and 2007.
Thus, when Utah joined the Big 12 prior to the 2024 campaign, many expected the rivalry games to take place in late November once again, only for the league to opt for midseason matchups instead.
When the topic of scheduling came up at the 2024 Big 12 football media days, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark addressed the issue, as the Deseret News previously reported.
“Well, I think rivalries are critically important. … I mean Utah-BYU, Arizona-Arizona State, Kansas-Kansas State, Baylor-TCU are, I mean, great rivalries.”
Yormark added at the time that vice president of football Scott Draper and his scheduling committee came up with the plan as a way to draw interest throughout November.
“They were focused on the rivalries that obviously mean something, not only to the history of our conference, but to our fans. And I think we landed in a great place,” Yormark said.
“We don’t necessarily have a rivalry week. We spread them around. I’ve discussed that a little bit with our head of football. So I don’t have a great answer on that other than we are focused on rivalries,” Yormark told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2024. “We’ve got great rivalries in our conference. We want to maintain those rivalries. And I think we did. But from a scheduling standpoint, it is not like we put everything on one weekend.”
However, the Big 12 did schedule four other rivalry games for the last week of the regular season in 2026: Arizona/Arizona State, Kansas State/Iowa State, Baylor/Houston and TCU/Texas Tech.
The likely explanation for putting BYU/Utah at midseason is the attempt to stand out amid the national football slate for the week and attract a wider television audience.
The 2024 game on Nov. 9 garnered 2.1 million viewers on ESPN, which at the time was the network’s third-highest late night mark of the year.
But in 2025, despite both teams being ranked in the top 15, the Cougars and Utes only picked up 1.97 million viewers on Fox.
For comparison, when BYU played at Cincinnati on Fox in late November (at the same kickoff time as the Utah game had been) that game yielded 2.6 million viewers.
On one hand, it makes sense for the Big 12 wanting to place the BYU/Utah rivalry in a unique spot on the calendar to try and attract more national interest — especially when “Big Noon Kickoff” or Dave Portnoy come to town as a result.
But when the Cougars and Utes clash, it becomes the biggest event of the year in the state of Utah, and the 2025 contest ended up determining which team appeared in the Big 12 championship game.
Something like that might deserve the dramatic buildup of an entire season before serving as the grand finale.
