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SALT LAKE CITY — One win does not define a team, and it certainly doesn't define a football season. But Utah's dominating win over the Oregon Ducks has certainly brought some added excitement to the program.
Following Utah's 62-20 win over Oregon, the Utes jumped up to No. 10 in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll and even received a first place vote. National attention quickly turned to the Utes as many voters raised the program to elite status, with some voters even moving Utah as high as the Top 5 in some ballots.
Although subjective in nature, the high rankings mixed with a quality win over Oregon gives Utah some optimism moving forward and at least some promise that the program can compete in the Pac-12.
"It should give (the team) some confidence and some buy-in, not that we have any trouble with the buy-in, but believing in what we're doing and preaching," Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham told media after the game. "This program is not easy; it's a tough program to be a part of. But if you do it the right way, hopefully you're going to see results, and tonight was one of those nights."
"We definitely knew it was going to be a big stage and we knew that coming into there was going to be tough to win," quarterback Travis Wilson, who accounted for 327 of the team's 530 total yards and five of the team's eight touchdowns, told ESPN 700. "But the biggest thing is we all believed that we were going to win this game. What we did good was not letting off the pedal and kept on scoring points and kept helping out our defense."
With the added attention comes a tremendous amount of expectation. Since joining the Pac-12, Utah has dabbled in the national spotlight from time to time, beating a highly-ranked Stanford team, sweeping the state of California and riding the rankings for much of the 2014 season.
As a Top 10 program, though, Utah finds itself in a position not known since its glory days at the end of its Mountain West Conference episode. Not since Utah became a regular BCS-busting team has the program seen as much attention.Although Utah has experience with tremendously successful seasons under Whittingham's coaching tenure as head coach and assistant, including two undefeated seasons, the schedule moving forward for Utah is more difficult and daunting than the former Mountain West Conference days. The upcoming schedule includes three nationally-ranked teams — Cal, USC, UCLA — and likely a fourth in Arizona, which recently fell out of the rankings after losing to UCLA.
"We don't have all the answers right now. We played very well tonight, but there's some big challenges ahead," Whittingham told ESPN 700. "Those (upcoming) eight games in a row, that's going to be a grind and it's going to be tough. This conference is loaded, and we're going to have to bring our best football every single week."
"We've just got to continue to build off of this great win tonight and go into the bye week and come back and continue to build off this great win that we played tonight," running back Devontae Booker told ESPN 700. "We've just got to continue to go about it the same way we do every week. We've just got to play our opponent and keep going out there grinding. Everything will pay off when we go out there and play."
The last time Utah was ranked in the Top 10 was in 2010 when the Utes were ranked No. 6, playing against No. 4 TCU. The excitement around Utah was again high, with ESPN's College Gameday hyping up the game at Rice-Eccles Stadium. But what came next is a lesson to Utah moving forward that few can ride the expectation wave long enough before falling victim to a dose of reality unless there's an effort to continually get better.
Utah played as dominant a game as has been seen by the program against Oregon, but it must continue to get better and find a way to have each facet of its team get involved in the game if it wants to maintain its spot as a top-tier program. If not, Utah will fall victim to the hype and expectations, similar to Utah's 47-7 loss to TCU in 2010.
