As far as Utah goes, a potential early-December return to the desert and a defense of last season’s pac12 crown has met some hiccups, but remains very much alive following its 43-42 win over USC.
if the Utes can survive a tricky Thursday night trip to Washington State off a byeUtah closes its home schedule Nov. 5 vs. Arizona and Nov. 12 vs. Stanford. With those results and others across the conference pending, the Utes traveling to face Oregon at Autzen Stadium on Nov. 19 is likely to bring with it significant Pac-12 championship game implications. In the case of the Ducks, there could also be significant College Football Playoff indications involved.
“As a team, we try not to think about that too much,” Vele said. “Obviously, we try to keep an eye out to see where the standings are, if we control our destiny, what we have to do to get to that championship game. We try to focus on who we’re playing this week, and not think about, ‘Well, if these guys beat those guys, we should be able to beat them.’ Once we start thinking like this, that’s when we start getting in our heads.
In May, the NCAA Division I Council announced it would relax restrictions on conference championship games, allowing conferences to determine the teams that would participate in their respective title game. The potential outcome of that decision was conferences eliminating divisions altogether.