The 2026 season will feature a pretty rare phenomenon for the Utah football team.
For the first time since the 2013 season, the Utes will open up the campaign by playing three consecutive home games. Utah kicks off the Morgan Scalley era by playing Idaho on Sept. 3 before welcoming in SEC opponent Arkansas on Sept. 12 and closing out the nonconference slate with the Battle of the Brothers vs. Utah State on Sept. 19.
The Utes don’t hit the road until Sept. 26, when they travel to face a rebuilding Iowa State team in Ames.
The highlight of the nonconference schedule is a rare visit from an SEC team. It’s the first-ever meeting between Arkansas and Utah and just the second time an SEC opponent has made the trip to Salt Lake City — Florida being the other in 2023, a 24-11 Utes win.
With limited openings, each non-conference game is usually scheduled years in advance. The contract for Utah’s home-and-home series with Arkansas, for example, was signed back in July 2019.
Currently, the Utes are scheduled out until 2033, with marquee games against Miami (2027, Las Vegas), Wisconsin (road in 2028, home in 2033) and LSU (home in 2031, road in 2032).
It’s customary in college football nonconference play for the home team to pay the visiting team, especially when they schedule FCS and Group of Six teams.
In the case of Utah’s game against Idaho, the Utes will get to open the season with a game they’ll surely win big. Idaho’s reward for a near-certain loss is $600,000, according to a copy of the game contract obtained by the Deseret News via a public records request.
Idaho will also receive 300 complimentary tickets to the game at Rice-Eccles Stadium with the option to purchase “up to but not limited to” 2,000 tickets in the visitors’ section.
Interestingly, per the contract, Utah “agrees to provide the Visiting Institution with one 30-second message in each national broadcast network or cable network telecast.”
Utah’s contract with Utah State for the 2026 contest, as part of a two-for-one deal, calls for the Utes to pay the Aggies $600,000. Like the Idaho contract, the Aggies also receive 300 complimentary tickets to the game with the option to purchase “up to but not limited to” 2,000 tickets in the visitors’ section.
One interesting part of the contract, which was signed in December of 2023, is that the games could be canceled by either party without penalty if either school moves conferences.
Utah State joined the Pac-12 this season, of course, but Utah will certainly not be canceling. In fact, the Utes added two more future games against the Aggies recently, moving the 2031 contest at Rice-Eccles Stadium to 2030 and adding a 2031 game at Maverik Stadium and a 2033 contest at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
After hosting Arkansas this season, the Utes will make the return visit to Fayetteville in 2028.
Utah will pay Arkansas $250,000 for its trip to Rice-Eccles Stadium and the Utes will receive the same amount when they travel to Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
Utah will provide Arkansas with 400 complimentary tickets and an allotment of 2,500 tickets for fans to purchase in the visitors’ section.
The buyout for each game is $2 million.
A boilerplate part of the contract — “the time of the game will be designated by the home team at a later time” — ended up causing a stir this offseason. In actuality, Utah’s game times are decided by Big 12 TV partners Fox and ESPN.
ESPN, which selected the Sept. 12 game, chose an 8:15 p.m. MDT kickoff time, which angered Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek.
“I am extremely concerned and displeased about the recently released kickoff times for our football program in consecutive weeks this September and the impact it will have on the well-being of our student-athletes,” Yurachek wrote in a post on X.
“ESPN has set our game at Utah for 9:15 p.m. Central Time on September 12. We anticipate returning to campus at approximately 6 a.m. on Sunday, September 13 — followed by an 11 a.m. home kickoff against Georgia just six days later on September 19.
“This assigned schedule will cost our student-athletes nearly a full day of rest and recovery that they would otherwise have available to them. This is not simply a competitive disadvantage — it is a genuine welfare issue for the young men who represent our program and contribute greatly to the bottom line of our television partners.”
Yurachek wrote that he has “formally requested that the SEC office and ESPN aggressively pursue an alternative solution for one or both kickoff times during these consecutive weeks,” but the 8:15 p.m. game time is still on in Salt Lake City.