Utah Utes football

Utah Utes football

The Utah Utes college football program began in 1892 and has played home games at the current site of Rice-Eccles Stadium since 1927. They have won 24 conference championships in five conferences during their history, and, as of the end of the 2018 season, they have a cumulative record of 677 wins, 464 losses, and 31 ties. The Utes have a record of 17–6 in major bowl games.

About Utah Utes football in brief

Summary Utah Utes footballThe Utah Utes college football program began in 1892 and has played home games at the current site of Rice-Eccles Stadium since 1927. They have won 24 conference championships in five conferences during their history, and, as of the end of the 2018 season, they have a cumulative record of 677 wins, 464 losses, and 31 ties. The Utes have a record of 17–6 in major bowl games. In the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, Utah defeated the Pittsburgh Panthers 35–7, and in the 2009 Sugar Bowl, they defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide 31–17. Utah’s first game against another college, Utah Agricultural College, was scheduled for Thanksgiving Day, but was postponed one day due to a snow storm. Utah did not field a team in 1893, but resumed playing in 1894. One other season in Utah’s history has been canceled: in 1918, due to World War I. Utah has won 13 conference championships, including six in a row from 1928 to 1933 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. Utah won its first bowl game in the 1939 Sun Bowl, the popularly called Sun Bowl in the Big Seven Conference or \”Skyline Conference\” or “Skyline Six” during Ike Armstrong’s tenure as head coach. As the popularity of Ute football grew, Armstrong also oversaw the opening of the Ute Stadium in 1945, which is where the team now plays its home games. The team has won its last two bowl games, the 2009 Fiesta Bowl and the 2011 Sugar Bowl.

Utah was the first team from a conference without an automatic bid to play in a BCS bowl game—colloquially known as being a B CS Buster—and the first BCS Buster to play in a second BCS Bowl. The team was unable to find a postseason opponent that year, but found the opposition that year all 20 years later was the New Mexico MSC in the popular Sun Bowl. The game was played in the 1940s and 1950s as the Sun Bowl was popularly known as the “Big Seven Conference” or “The Sun Six” and played in its first season in the MSC’s new Sun Bowl stadium, which was also called the “Sun Bowl” in the 1950s and ’60s. Utah played its first football game against a non-conference opponent, Utah State, on November 14, 1892, and won 12–0. The school’s first sustained success came when, in 1904, it hired Joe Maddock to coach football, as well as basketball and track. In 1905, the Galveston Daily News reported, “He has the Mormons all football crazy.” He has written here to say that his team now holds the championship of Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and the greater part of Colorado. In early 1910, Maddock retired from coaching Fred Bennion coached the Utes from 1910 to 1913. 1910 was also Utah’s first season as a member of a conference, the Rocky mountain Athletic Conference. Nelson Norgren finished with a record during his coaching years from 1913 to 1917.