Utah-BYU
Saturday, Oct. 18
8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific
Fox
The best rivalries in college football are widely known and recognized. Alabama-Auburn, Army-Navy, Michigan-Ohio State, USC-UCLA, and a handful of other games always get plenty of attention and are well established within the sport’s history. Utah versus BYU might not exist on the same level of prominence in college football, but for anyone who follows the sport, this rivalry doesn’t take a back seat to other prime college football feuds.
This is a spicy, contentious rivalry in which both schools have a healthy level of dislike — if not hatred — for the other. A social media post which circulated this past week recalled an incident nearly 25 years ago in which a BYU fan ran onto the field during a BYU-Utah game and attacked a Utah cheerleader (a male one) and got beaten up. Yes, this game — known as “The Holy War” — is really intense. It is an underrated college football rivalry when considering how much national media attention flows elsewhere.
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The intrigue surrounding this game starts with the ferocity of the rivalry itself, but this is also a big game in the Big 12 standings. Utah and BYU are vying for a spot in the Big 12 Championship Game, with Texas Tech having the inside track and Cincinnati being a foremost contender. BYU and Utah are firmly in the mix, and the winner naturally gets a head-to-head tiebreaker which could really come in handy at the end of November.
It’s not easy to evaluate these teams. Utah has looked dominant on some occasions, but it crushed Arizona State when the Sun Devils lacked quarterback Sam Leavitt. That detail has to be taken into consideration. Utah dominated UCLA, but that was before the Bruins made the coaching change which turned around their season.
BYU has consistently won in Big 12 play, but the Cougars have had to rally late to win against Colorado and especially Arizona. They didn’t play well in the first 2.5 quarters of either of those games and had to scramble to pull them out of the fire. BYU is a resourceful team, but it has not controlled play in multiple important games this season. We don’t know how good these teams really are, and that’s an important part of the betting calculus here.
Utah Utes-BYU Cougars Odds
Hear TJ Rives and Jason Powers break down this game on the 3Dog Thursday Podcast by clicking Play below:
Spread: Utah -3.5 (-105), BYU +3.5 (-115)
Total: 48.5 (Over -110, Under -110)
Underdog moneyline: BYU +150
This really does feel like a game in which you should wait for a live play and not make a pregame wager. These teams are mysterious, and betting shouldn’t be done in the absence of certainty or — at the very least — a general sense of confidence.
On the other hand, you have a situation here in which an underdog of more than a field goal is playing at home, at night. The idea that BYU — if it does lose — won’t lose by more than three points seems like a good possibility. If you want to buy into BYU, believing that Utah’s best wins came against weak or undermanned opponents, you would be using a logical thought process. However, this game could veer in various directions. You might want to see how the first quarter unfolds before you make a play. You have been warned. Our lean is to BYU, but we’re not especially confident.