With a standard 12-game schedule set to take effect for Division-I football teams next year, the Utes have finally filled their last vacant slot.
The Northern Arizona Lumberjacks will make their way to Rice-Eccles Stadium next season, rounding out a group of four non-conference opponents for the U football team and joining Ohio, UCLA and Utah State.
U Athletics Director Chris Hill confirmed that the two schools have officially agreed to the game.
“The new rule passed that every year, you’re allowed to have 12 games,” Hill said. “We were allowed to add a game this year, and we just needed that sixth home game.”
Hill said he has been working with the Northern Arizona athletics department “for a couple months,” and they have finally ironed out the details.
While the Mountain West Conference schedule won’t be released for a few more weeks, U football coach Kyle Whittingham suggested that the showdown with Northern Arizona might be a mid-season tilt rather than an early-season tune-up to conference play.
“When we went to 12 games, everybody kind of went into panic mode because scheduling a game is not quite as easy as you might think,” Whittingham said. “Usually, these games are scheduled five, six, seven years in advance.”
The Lumberjacks went 3-8 in 2005, including a home victory over Southern Utah.
The Utes are still expected to open up the season on the road against the UCLA Bruins, who were 10-2 last season and featured one of the most potent offenses in the country.
“It’s always great to get a Pac-10 team on the schedule,” Whittingham said. “That’s a positive thing, in terms of recruiting and things of that nature.”
While the U didn’t have that much time to add its 12th game to next season’s schedule, Whittingham said the options might have been limited anyway.
“With this program, we’re at a point now where we can’t schedule a (road game against) Michigan or an Ohio State without getting a home-and-home deal out of it,” he said. “So with the options we had, we got the best deal we could.”
The 2007 schedule may be even more daunting for the Utes. On the slate are such non-conference opponents as Oregon State, UCLA and Louisville. “That schedule’s pretty loaded,” Whittingham said.