I initially thought that it would take BYU a few years to spin up to get back "on par" with Utah, now that they're again on equal footing from a conference, playoff access, media revenue perspective. If it were solely those considerations, I'd suspect the rivalry evens out again to the back-and-forth that existed in the MWC days.

However, the current environment is entirely different than it was in that era, and there are a few factors that might work in BYU's favor:

1) Pro Sports in SLC

Utah Football has enjoyed being the premiere outlet for sports passions in SLC. Most of the transplants to UT automatically adopted the Utes by default when they settled in. The Wasatch front has had something of an artificial binary option. Without a lot of pro sports going on, the whole state was a college sports state. Given that, you're either you're Red or Blue, no other meaningful door #3 options. The vast majority of transplants to the region, unless they had previous ties to BYU, defaulted to Red, and picked up Ute gear once the settled in and clued into this phenomenon, both because there was no other outlet for them, and because BYU represented all the "peculiarity" they don't identify with in their new homeland. By contrast, BYU fans are generally only BYU fans because of a direct tie the university or at least their faith. There is little inertia to adopt BYU otherwise. To the contrary, one could make the argument that BYU fandom, outside of UT county perhaps, is actually swimming up stream compared the default status for new Ute fans without any real association.

As SLC itself grows in profile, and pro sports expand, there will be more competition for donor dollars, eyeballs, and general interest. This will go up an order of magnitude if SLC were to get and NFL team at some point, and I think those passions take away from Utah collegiate support disproportionately.




2) The Transfer Portal

The transfer portal effectively de-emphasizes the High School recruiting battles. It shifts the recruiting process from speculating on 17yo HS kids with stars in their eyes to more known quantities in 19 and 20yo kids who're potentially looking at the world through a bit more mature priorities and humility. They may have come to a reality check that their NFL dreams and playing time at a blue-blood school isn't going the way they'd envisioned and they're decision-making is less concerned with things like partying or social scenes as they are life after football, meaning education and getting paid as much as they can before their glory days come to an end. I could be projecting a bit because of my own path to BYU (I was "too cool" for BYU at 18, but had a very different outlook at 22 when I transferred).


3) NIL

Currently, I think BYU is better positioned to compete in the NIL arms race. Not that Utah doesn't have well-heeled donors, but they have to compete demands on those donors' dollars. Also, being a state-funded school, there exists less of a donor culture in general and less of an apparatus in place for soliciting and cultivating them. With a transfer portal, which is essentially just a marketplace of proven mercenaries available to the highest bidder, the NIL can be deployed to great effect, without having to compete on other merits like brand allure, or be discouraged by the Honor Code for a year.



I could potentially see a future where the pro sports end up somehow funding the NIL machine, and IMO Utah athletics would be wise to figure out a way to leverage that, in which case the outlook might change yet again.

There is also some risk in the coaching change, which should be noted as well, though I don't think Utah would be unable to attract a new coach after a few seasons if Scalley isn't able to produce.

Regardless the remainder of the decade is going to be very, very interesting indeed.