Here’s why the rivalry game with Utah is ‘Super Bowl’ for No. 9 BYU

PROVO — (KSL.com) Ten weeks into the 2024 college football season, BYU’s “Super Bowl” has arrived.

It’s rivalry week in Utah, and the return of the once-annual game between the Cougars and archrival Utah for the first time in three years and the first time as conference foes in over a decade.

For the ninth-ranked Cougars, who have everything left to play for as one of five unbeaten teams in college football, Saturday’s 8:15 p.m. MST kickoff is a chance to improve on their 8-0 start to the season that includes a 5-0 mark in Big 12 play.

In many ways, it’s still BYU’s Super Bowl. But that’s nothing new, either.

“Every week is a Super Bowl, a new statement for us, and that’s something that (head coach Kalani Sitake) preaches to us,” said BYU running back Hinckley Ropati, whose team is a 4-point road favorite. “I think it has been a huge contributor to why we’ve been able to have the success we’ve been able to have because we just focus on the task at hand.”

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Finally receiving some national attention that BYU feels it deserves — and at 8-0, who’s to argue? — the Cougars will earn a look-in from the College Football Playoff selection committee Tuesday night when the first top-25 rankings are revealed on ESPN.

A win over the Utes (4-4, 1-4 Big 12) will put BYU in the drivers’ seat for a Big 12 championship game appearance, a potential CFP berth, or perhaps the program’s first New Year’s bowl berth since 1996.

That doesn’t make this week’s opponent nameless or faceless. More than 100 years of history is impossible to ignore — and BYU coaches wouldn’t try, even if they could.

“For the new players that are here, the fans themselves have already educated our players about how important this game is,” Sitake said. “For us, as the coaching staff, we have to get back to the basics. It doesn’t really matter who is on the other side.

“There are a lot of things that we can do differently and do better as a team first before we can start worrying about the drama and emotions that go into the game,” he added. “I think passion will be what matters most. I think if players don’t know about the rivalry, they still care about the fans and their family.”

Indeed, 10 weeks into a season where BYU was picked to finish 13th in their second season in the conference, the Cougars still have everything they dreamed of — and then some — to play for.

Not that they needed any more motivation. Not this week, at least.

“I know for a lot of fans and different people, it’s going to be bigger than another game,” said BYU linebacker Jack Kelly, who grew up in the Salt Lake Valley and prepped at Kearns High. “But at the end of the day, we’re just going out there playing football and we’re the same guys, so just trying to stay grounded and know that we’ve done this before.”

Kelly, who leads BYU with 18 tackles, four sacks and a forced fumble since transferring from Weber State, has been around the rivalry his whole life. Most notably, he’s been heavily invested since he was 14, when the former aspiring BMX rider turned his utmost attention toward the gridiron.

That’s more time spent in the rivalry than Jake Retzlaff, the Corona, California, native who came to BYU after two years in the California junior college system.

But Retzlaff knows a thing or two about the rivalry. Whether from his teammates, his quarterback mentor John Beck, or random fans in Provo, he knows that this game — the rivalry one, the one that goes back to at least 1922 (although neither team can agree on the official start date) that Utah leads 59-32-4 all-time — means a little bit more.

If that makes Game 9, or “statement No. 9” as the team has taken to call it, the Cougars’ Super Bowl, then so be it.

“I play with enough emotion as it is, so I just try to remove the emotion from the rivalry and attack it like a football game,” Retzlaff said. “It’s not something the fans want to hear, but it’s the truth. That’s how you go and win these games, you remove the intense emotion out of it and then you just go play ball and keep executing like we’ve done all year.”