Utah's chasing another Big 12 title shot. West Virginia's just trying to survive Rich Rodriguez's second act. This one's a mismatch on paper, and it's happening on a Friday night in Salt Lake City.
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FRI NOV 27 · 8:00 PM CT
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West Virginia
Utah
This is West Virginia's regular-season finale, and it comes on the heels of a 4-8 season that missed bowl eligibility entirely. Rodriguez responded by ripping up nearly his entire offensive staff and the quarterback room with it — Nicco Marchiol, the guy who started most of 2025, hit the transfer portal along with two other passers. The fix was landing Oklahoma transfer Michael Hawkins Jr., a four-star arm with three years left who's now the presumed frontrunner over incumbent Scotty Fox. That's a lot of new pieces to have humming by late November.
Utah, meanwhile, is dealing with change at the very top. Kyle Whittingham left after 21 seasons to take over at Michigan, and longtime defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley got the promotion — and immediately delivered, winning his head-coaching debut in a 44-22 Las Vegas Bowl beatdown of Nebraska. The centerpiece of that offense, Devon Dampier, threw for 310 yards and ran for 148 more in that bowl game and chose to come back for another year instead of testing the portal. A quarterback that dynamic returning to a Scalley-run program that just finished 11-2 is the kind of continuity WVU simply doesn't have right now.
History offers little comfort for the Mountaineers here. Utah owns this series outright, and the most recent meeting — September 2025 — wasn't close, a 48-22 Utah win. These two programs aren't rivals in any real sense; this is a newer Big 12 pairing since Utah's 2024 conference move, and it's landing on a Friday night slot on FOX after originally being scheduled for Saturday.
West Virginia Mountaineers
Utah Utes
The gap between these two rosters is the story. Utah returns a bowl MVP quarterback and a staff that just proved it can win without its longtime architect. West Virginia is rebuilding its passing game from scratch with a transfer QB who's made all of 5 career starts. Whatever fight WVU shows late in the year will hinge on whether Hawkins — or whoever wins that job — looks like a Big 12 starter by Thanksgiving weekend.
West Virginia Mountaineers
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Fully healthy — no injuries to report
Utah Utes
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Fully healthy — no injuries to report
None of this is settled with training camp still weeks away, and depth charts always shift once pads come on in August. But the trajectory of these two programs points in opposite directions heading into this one, and that's before factoring in Utah playing at home in front of a crowd that's used to winning Big 12 games.
