Story thread · 7 reports / 4 sources

What college football pundits predict for Utah’s season

deseret.com · 11dShare

This article was first published in the Ute Insiders newslett er . Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Wednesday night. After eight long months, football season is finally here. The Utes kick off the 2026 campaign against Idaho on Thursday (7 p.m. MDT, ESPNU), kickstarting the highly anticipated Morgan Scalley era. The pressure is on for Scalley in his first year after longtime coach Kyle Whittingham “stepped down,” then took the Michigan job. According to emails obtained by the Deseret News , Whitingham wanted to stay at Utah, but the school countered with a one-year contract for the 2026 season that would have given Scalley, the coach-in-waiting, “full and final oversight in decision-making for the areas of football recruiting/player personnel staffing and the general manager position effective Feb. 1,” which was after the 2026 transfer portal closed. Utah and Whittingham could not come to an agreement on those terms and Whittingham stepped down, with Scalley being e

First report: Morgan Scalley dishes on home head coaching debut, team health and administrative support — deseret.com, 14d