Utah Outside of Top 10 in On3 Sports' Preseason Top 25

After Joel Klatt ranked Utah #9 in his Preseason Top 25, On3 Sports' Jesse Simonton put the Utes a little lower down the rankings in his list , but still has them as the highest-ranked Big 12 team.

Georgia takes the top spot in Simonton's preseason Top 25 followed by Ohio State, Texas, Oregon, Alabama, Ole Miss, Michigan, Florida State, Notre Dame, Mizzou, Penn State, Tennessee, Utah, Clemson, LSU, Oklahoma, Miami, NC State, K-State, Texas A&M, OK-State, Iowa, USC, Arizona, and rounding out the list is Kansas.

When talking about Utah's spot in his rankings, Simonton said, "The Utes recently renamed defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as the program’s next head-coach-in-waiting, so could 2024 be Kyle Whittingham’s swan song season in yet another new conference?"

He continued, saying, "The longtime Utah head coach has led the program to conference titles in the Mountain West and Pac-12, and with seventh-year senior quarterback Cam Rising back, Whittingham’s team is among the favorites to win the Big 12 this fall. The Utes also bring back injured tight end Brant Kuithe and tailback Micah Bernard, as well as a likely Top 25 defense nationally."

Despite the lower ranking, the Utes still fall within the relative window that most publications and pundits have set for the team to start the season. Plus, if these were official, they would still rank 6 spots higher than the next Big 12 team in Kansas State.

Coming off of a rather forgetful 2023 campaign, the amount of hype surrounding the program is refreshing, and hopefully, the team can match and even beat those expectations, adding new silverware to the cabinet and rendering last season a distant memory.