Utah head coach issues warning to new Big 12 Conference visitors in 2024

Part of adding new teams to any conference is the unfamiliarity with new home stadiums and their rabid (or tepid) fanbases.

With four new teams in 2024, Big 12 Conference schools will now find themselves exploring the desert with trips to Arizona and Arizona State and the mountains with Colorado and Utah … although not all of these trips will come with the same amount of gravitas.

One that will? Any time a team heads to play Utah at 52,000-seat Rice-Eccles Stadium, which longtime Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham made sure to point out recently.

"(Utah) is a tough place to play,” Whittingham said at Big 12 Media Days . "We've had 12 straight years of sell out. You know, 52-thousand plus with standing room only every single week."

Utah welcomes three "grandfathered" Big 12 teams to Rice-Eccles this season with Baylor (Sept. 7), TCU (Oct. 19) and Iowa State (Nov. 23).

Whittingham isn't the only one who thinks Rice-Eccles is a tough place to play — it was also the only team included in the Top 25 " Toughest Places to Play " in the mega-hit EA Sports College Football 25 video game.