Patrick Kinahan: Utes spot on for playing great competition early

SALT LAKE CITY — On the road, in front of a delirious crowd of 90,000, against a storied program from the nation's best football conference isn't exactly the easiest path to start a season successfully.

Yet, the Utah Utes willfully opted from their usual protocol and ventured deep into Southeastern Conference country Saturday to play Florida. And despite losing a heartbreaker on a late interception in the end zone, the Utes are far better off for it aside the nightmare travel situation back home due to the charter's mechanical problems.

Credit Utah for bypassing the more common route, playing a Big Sky team in the opener at Rice-Eccles Stadium in a game the Pac-12 would have buried on its underexposed television station. That's exactly the situation in Game 2 this week against Southern Utah.

Four Pac-12 teams went light after dark last week, scheduling games against FCS teams. Predictably, all of them romped to easy wins and enjoyed the accompanying pats on the butt.

The two future conference defectors, USC and UCLA, were slightly more noble in playing overmatched FBS teams at home. As expected, both rolled before the sun-drenched hometown fans.

All those games against what basically amounts to guaranteed wins provided little insight into the talent of each team. Who knows more about his team heading into Week 2: USC coach Lincoln Riley, whose Trojans hammered Rice 66-14, or Utah coach Kyle Whittingham?

Gotta be Whittingham. Hands down.

What's the point of Alabama destroying Utah State 55-0 last week? The answer rates the same as what is war good for — absolutely nothing. (For all the youngsters reading this, look up protest songs of the 1960s for reference).

"You can win a game against a lesser opponent and have a bunch of things that are masked because you're so superior physically and athletically that it hides itself," Whittingham said. "A game like this (against Florida) will expose everything that you've got to work on and where your deficiencies are. In that regard, I don't regret playing these guys in the opener."

Nor should he. Even if the Gators, who were 6-7 last season, don't pan out this year under new coach Billy Napier, it was still worth it for Utah to schedule a home-and-home series — the return game is next year — with them.

For all intent and purposes, the Utes will get more out of practice this week than lining up against Southern Utah in front of the paying customers. Much like the Aggies did in Tuscaloosa, the Thunderbirds will bus south with a lopsided loss knowing they got a payday to help subsidize the entire athletic department.

USC, meanwhile, will travel north to Palo Alto to play conference rival Stanford in a battle of mysteries. Don't expect the Trojans defense, which is unproven, to have three interceptions returned for touchdowns as it did against the who-who Owls.

Not every program can follow BYU's route of lining up decent competition each year in September. As an independent for 12 seasons, the Cougars always had to frontload the schedule to get quality competition for conference play starts around the country.

Going forward, once conference affiliation starts next year with the Big 12, it will be interesting to see how BYU handles its early portion of the schedule. There's a delicate balance between gaining confidence and preparing for conference play, but slogging through lousy competition makes for boring games.

One of the better aspects of the upcoming playoff expansion to 12 teams could be eliminating money games against grossly inferior programs. With the expected automatic bids and several at-large berths available, one or two losses won't prevent teams from playoff access.

As it stands now, Utah's path to the four-team playoff likely requires going undefeated up through the conference championship game in December. The problem is, no Pac-12 team has gone unscathed since the conference brought in Utah and Colorado.

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