Utah Utes quarterback Jason Shelley (15) celebrates his team's win over the Oregon Ducks at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018. (Spenser Heaps, Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY – The No. 21 ranked Utes football team have become Oregon fans after beating the Ducks on Saturday 32-25 despite starting their second string players in the back field.
The reason fans, players, and coaches will be rooting for Oregon is because the Ducks host Arizona State this Saturday. At Monday’s press conference a reporter asked head coach Kyle Whittingham if he is a fan now going into next week. The coach responded quickly with “absolutely”.
“They’ve got to play A-State, right? It’s at Oregon, correct? And then they’ve got Arizona after that, if you want to know who Arizona State has after that,” Whittingham said.
Here is what is at stake: If the Utes and Sun Devils win out their conference games, they will finish with identical records at 6-3. The problem for the University of Utah football team is Arizona State holds the tie-breaker.
The Utes have one last conference game at Colorado at 11:30 A.M. Saturday. They just need one more Sun Devil loss and a win Saturday to earn the Pac-12 South Division title.
The Utah-BYU game will be at Rice-Eccles stadium this year on November 24th. The kick-off time will be at 8 P.M. and will be broadcast on FS1.
The Utes say they are not focused on that, for now they have the sole focus of beating Colorado.
“I don’t know what’s after Colorado, man,” senior linebacker Cody Barton said. “We’ll have to see.”