Perfect Timing

At the start of the 2011 college football season the University of Utah will be playing in an expanded PAC-10 conference. Since the Mountain West Conference was formed in 1999 the Utes have amassed four conference crowns, nine bowl victories with two coming in BCS games, and a ranking of #2 in the final AP poll in 2009. While the majorities seem to believe that the Utes will become another middle of the road PAC-10 school, please consider the timing of this announcement.
USC was put on probation earlier this month with monumental sanctions. USC is due to lose post season play for two years and 30 scholarships over that same span. This announcement marked the end of USC’s dominance in the PAC-10. I can only imagine the look on your face right now is one of doubt. However, we have many examples of teams that cannot recover from such sanctions. Miami dominated college football in the early 90’s. Sanctions in the mid 90’s knocked them off course for the last half of the decade. Alabama has always been a superior program in the SEC. Sanctions in the early 2000’s derailed their program until Nick Saban arrived three years ago and led the Tide to their 13th national championship and first since 1992. We have seen this before and we will see it again.
Jake Locker of Washington is considered the lead candidate to go #1 in the 2011 NFL draft. His main competition is Stanford’s Andrew Luck. Both quarterbacks’ are expected to leave after the 2010 college football season. Oregon’s QB, Jeremiah Massoli, won the hearts of college football fans everywhere with his brutal play. He was expected to lead Oregon to national championship contention in 2010 or 2011 but was dismissed from the team due to a string of offenses with the law. In steps Utah’s Jordan Wynn and USC’s Matt Barkley to be the dominating quarterbacks. Both quarterbacks will be juniors in 2011 with plenty of experience. Barkley’s downfall will come with a lack of underclassmen talent that will follow scholarship restrictions and a probable early exit to the NFL in 2012.
What does all of this mean? Utah will be contenders in the newly expanded PAC-10 from the very beginning. They will enter a conference with the mind set to win from the start and they will. I predict a spot in the conference championship game within three years. This will propel them to a contender year in and year out for many years to come. Utah’s entrance into a conference in flux, along with great coaching, could be the driving factor to a National Championship in this decade.