It’s been a slow climb, but the Utes are undoubtedly starting to reap the benefits of being a part of the Pac-12.
In the last couple of days, the Utah football program has picked up a number of recruits, including a couple more from high school state powerhouse, Florida. Every season since they’ve joined the conference, the Utes have played the part of a Power 5 school more and more with each passing year. They’ve opened up a new football facility, have a signature conference win (last year vs. Stanford) and, maybe the most impressive of them all, recruiting.
The freshman class of 2014 has already seen a good mix of athletes from all over the country. Louisiana, Florida and Texas are just a few of the states that Utah has been able to snag recruits from. Not only are those states traditional juggernaut states when it comes to high school football, but they are also in heavy-SEC territory. The Utes were able to not only improve their own program, but the Pac-12 as a whole, by directing those southern state recruits out West.
An obvious statement that is made often when talking about good college football teams is that if you can’t recruit well, the program will suffer.
Utah saw the effects of this when they first joined the conference. It looked inferior against nearly every conference foe in its first season in the Conference of Champions. But with each passing year, the Utes are looking more and more like a Pac-12 squad and less like a punching bag.
While out-of-state recruiting has improved, Utah’s in-state recruiting has taken a hit. The Utes have been striking out when trying to get the Beehive State’s best football players. Utah has missed out on the last four No. 1 prospects in the state of Utah, including this 2015 class. It was close last year when former Bingham tight end Dalton Schultz was considering his home state school, but in the end, the Utes lost out to Pac-12 opponent, Stanford.
That being said, Utah hardly ever gets the state’s highest-rated recruits, as they are typically good enough to go to some of the biggest programs in the entire nation such as Alabama (Cooper Bateman) and Stanford (Schultz).
As far as some of the middle-of-the-pack recruits go, let’s be honest, a three-star recruit from Florida is probably better than a three-star recruit from Utah. The fact that the Utes are branching out and nabbing recruits from the big states is impressive.
All of that being said, the recruiting has been good and bad for the Utes in recent years. Good, because of the wide scope that Utah has set on the nation. Bad, because the improvements made in the entire program still are not good enough to keep the top recruits in Utah at home.
The question then becomes which is more important for the Utes, getting the top recruits in the state and potentially the country or getting a large quantity of good, but not great, athletes from anywhere they can get them?
In my opinion, the latter is of more importance and I think Utah is in agreement, evident by the slow and steady improvement across the board every season.
 
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