Utah Utes
The Utah Utes are the college sports department of the University of Utah based in Salt Lake City , the capital of the US state of Utah . The name is derived from the Ute , a Native American people whose settlement area is in Utah, among other places. The Utah Utes represent teams in seven men's and ten women's sports and are regionally and nationwide particularly successful in American football , as runnin 'utes in men's basketball and under the name Utah Red Rocks in women's gymnastics . They start in Division I, the top division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and in American football they belong to the former Division IA known as the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) . The Utah Utes have been a member of the Pacific-12 Conference since 2011 , having previously been a member of the Western Athletic Conference from 1962 to 1998 and of the Mountain West Conference from 1999 to 2010 .
sports
American football
The Utah Utes football team has been in existence since 1892 and has played its home games in Salt Lake City since 1927 at Rice-Eccles Stadium , which has a capacity of around 45,000 spectators. The team has won 24 conference championships to date and played 16 bowl games in the postseason, of which they won twelve. In particular, the phases under the coach Ike Armstrong from 1925 to 1949 and since 1990 under Ron McBride (1990-2002), Urban Meyer (2003-2005) and Kyle Whittingham (since 2005) are considered to be periods of long-term success, during the period of the The mid-1960s to the end of the 1980s was characterized by failure and frequent coach changes. Between 1964 and 1992, for example, neither won a conference championship in the Western Athletic Conference nor qualified for a bowl game in the postseason.
In a nationwide comparison, the team was eight times (1964, 1994, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014) in the top 25 of the Associated Press among sports journalists ( AP Poll ) and USA Today among coaches ( Coaches Poll ), including three times (1994, 2004, 2008) in both surveys among the top ten teams. The Utah Utes' greatest successes in American football were winning the Fiesta Bowl in 2004 and the Sugar Bowl in 2009 . With the victory in the Fiesta Bowl, the team, which at that time still belonged to the Mountain West Conference , became the first team in the history of college football to qualify from a conference without automatic start rights of the conference winner in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) for participating in the BCS and winning a BCS bowl. By winning the Sugar Bowl against the highly favored Alabama Crimson Tide team from the University of Alabama , the Utah Utes achieved their best position so far at the end of the season with a second place in the AP Poll and a fourth place in the Coaches Poll .
basketball
In men's basketball , there has been a Utah Utes team since 1908, which plays under the name Runnin 'Utes . Their home games take place in Salt Lake City in the Jon M. Huntsman Center , which opened in 1969 and can seat 15,000 spectators. In addition to 36 conference championships, the team was able to win the national championship of the Amateur Athletic Union in 1916 and the national championship of the NCAA in 1944. Overall, the team qualified for 27 participations in the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship , with six times (1956, 1961, 1966, 1997, 1998) making it into the round of the best eight teams ( Elite Eight ), four times (1944, 1961, 1966, 1998) in the round of the last four teams ( Final Four ) and twice (1944 and 1998) qualification for the final. In 1947 the Utah Utes also won the National Invitation Tournament , in which they reached the final in 1974 and in 1992 the round of the last eight teams in addition to the victory in 1947 in ten participations.
The team was placed in the nationwide top 25 in 20 seasons so far. One of the most successful phases in the team's history was the period from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, which was mainly due to the work of Jack Gardner as Coach was shaped, under whose leadership the team won seven conference titles and twice reached the Final Four round of the state championship. More recently, the Utah Utes under coach Rick Majerus qualified eleven times for the national championship, ten conference championships and seven times a place in the top 25. In terms of the total number of games won in their history, the Utah Utes are on eleventh place among all college basketball teams in the US.
The Utah Utes women's basketball team has been in existence since 1974 and has won the Western Athletic Conference championship once and the Mountain West Conference championship seven times. In 16 participations in the NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship , the team made it into the round of the best eight teams (2006) and once in the round of the last 16 teams ( Sweet Sixteen , 2001). In addition, the team took part in the Women's National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) seven times and reached the WNIT final in 2013.
Apparatus gymnastics
The Utah Utes women's apparatus gymnastics team, which has been under the name Utah Red Rocks since 1976, also holds its competitions at the Huntsman Center and is one of the most successful teams in the country. So far it has won the national championship of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and nine times the national championship of the NCAA, which has been held since 1982, including six times in a row from 1981 to 1986, and also came in second eight times and third four times. In addition, the team has achieved first place and eight second place at 27 regional championships since it was founded.
The Utah Red Rocks are the only gymnastics team to consistently qualify for all NCAA national championships and also hold the NCAA records for the highest number of spectators in an individual competition (16,019 when compared to the University of Michigan on Jan. March 2015) and for the highest seasonal average (14,376 visitors per competition in the 2014 season). From its founding in 1976 to 2015, the team was coached by Greg Marsden , who was elected coach of the year seven times during this time and also coached the floor gymnasts of the US national team at the 1984 Summer Olympics and as coach of all American women in 1987 National team acted. He was the first gymnastics coach to achieve more than 1,000 wins in the NCAA.
More teams
Other sports in which the Utah Utes participate with teams in the NCAA's university sports operations include American football and basketball as well as baseball , golf , skiing , swimming , diving and tennis . In addition to basketball and apparatus gymnastics, the Utah Uates are also represented by teams in skiing, swimming and diving as well as tennis and also in cross-country running , soccer , softball , athletics and volleyball . Supraregional successes have been achieved particularly in skiing with a national championship title each for men and women as well as nine national championships since the introduction of the combined team classification in 1983.
History and traditions
The Utah Utes did not belong to any conference until 1909 . From 1910 to 1937 they competed in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and from 1938 to 1947 in the Big Seven Conference , which was named Skyline Conference from 1948 . From 1962 the University of Utah was a member of the newly created Western Athletic Conference (WAC), from which it withdrew together with other universities in 1999 to found the Mountain West Conference (MWC). The Utah Utes have been competing in the Pacific-12 Conference since the 2011 season .
Rivalries with other universities traditionally exist in particular with the universities also located in the state of Utah, which also start in NCAA Division I, the Utah State University ( Battle of the Brothers ) and Brigham Young University ( Holy War ). In particular, the decades-long rivalry with Brigham Young University is particularly intense due to the close proximity between the two universities and the competitive situation between the University of Utah as a state university and Brigham Young University as a private religious university with connections to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . The affiliation of both teams to the same conference, which dates back to 1918, ended in 2011 with the change of Utah Utes to the Pacific-10 Conference and Brigham Young University to the West Coast Conference , so that future games and competitions between the teams of both teams as inter-conference - Comparisons will take place.
The team colors of the Utah Utes, which are used for the design of sportswear and other equipment for the teams as well as for fan articles such as T-shirts , caps and flags , are red and white. The mascot represents a red-tailed hawk and is called Swoop . The logo called Drum and Feathers consists of the red letter "U" in block notation on a white background in a black circle, on the left side of which two white bird feathers with red tips are shown. The simple "U", the emblem of the University of Utah, known as Block U , is also often used as the logo of the sports teams. A team anthem called "Utah Man" is particularly popular in football games.
literature
- Patrick Sheltra: 100 Things Utes Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Triumph Books, Chicago 2011, ISBN 1-60078-597-2
- Terri Ellefsen (Ed.): Runnin 'Utes Basketball. Sports Publishing Inc., Champaign 1998, ISBN 1-58261-022-3
- Phil Miller, Dick Rosetta: The Unholy War: BYU vs. Utah. Gibbs Smith Publisher, Salt Lake City 1997, ISBN 0-87905-560-X
Web links
- The Official Athletic Site of the University of Utah Official Website