The more we schedule Home-&-Homes with teams like Pittsburgh, Michigan, Florida, Baylor, Arkansas, LSU, and Wisconsin, the more respect we’ll earn from the nation.
Conversely, when the ONLY non-conference, regular season P5 teams we’d played since 2011 were Pitt (2011) and Mich (2014, 2015), that does NOT earn much respect from the nation. And we can’t complain about that. What we can complain about is, why had our OOC schedules consisted of 18 midmajors (60%), 9 FCS (30%), and only 3 P5 (10%) opponents?
Fortunately, our future schedules look MUCH better. From 2022 thru 2033, we have (thus far) 18 P5 (66.7%) opponents, 3 midmajors (11.1%), and 6 FCS (22.2%) teams.
Granted that 8 of our 18 P5 opponents are ybU-p and Hou — who were midmajors when we’d scheduled them — the fact they’ll be Big 12 teams at game time will reflect better on Utah’s program from a national perspective.
We may not have as much respect as we deserve now, but we’ll be receiving it very soon. All we have to do is win.