Despite a couple of injuries to significant contributors that could’ve been crippling, Utah instead traversed those obstacles and made some program history in Week 12.
At 5-3, Utah came into Saturday with a half-game lead on a pair of 4-3 Pac-12 South teams in Arizona and Arizona State. Utah, in its last league game of the regular season, helped its own cause in the early-afternoon television window as they easily took care of Colorado in a 30-7 romp in snowy Boulder. In the final viewing window of the weekend, Oregon jumped out to a 28-13 halftime lead en route to routing Arizona State XX-XX in Eugene.
The combination of Utah’s win and Arizona State’s loss -- Arizona needed Colorado to knock off Utah to remain in contention -- means that the Utes have claimed the football program’s first-ever Pac-12 South championship. Utah will face the winner of the Apple Cup rivalry game between Washington and Washington State in the conference championship game Nov. 30 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
The Utes will be seeking their first conference championship of any kind since winning the second of its back-to-back Mountain West titles in 2004.
Utah also becomes the last of the six members of the South to win a division title. UCLA won the first two in 2011 and 2012; Arizona State won in 2013; Arizona won in 2014; USC won in 2015 and then again in 2017; and Colorado won in 2016.