When is Utah Tech Going FBS?

Utah Tech Athletic Director Ken Beazer about Utah Tech's potential jump to the FBS.

How the news broke (audio above)

Beazer: My son was the one who called me early Friday morning, and said

"Why did I get a notification from ESPN that you're going to the FBS?" 

And I said, "that's out there?"

And he said "Yes."

So I said "excuse me, I need to make some phone calls..."

(Laughter)

"I immediately called our head football coach Paul Peterson, and said 'you have no idea what's about to hit right now...because he had no idea about it. [The FBS part of the story] was rather a benign thing that came out of the conversations with the two leagues (WAC and ASUN) about combining to make a football only conference. A couple of presidents from the ASUN said 'we'd like to go FBS in the future, who else is looking at it?' And there was another school from the WAC, Tarleton State who has made no bones about wanting to go FBS...and so [the ASUN] just started going around to each WAC president...and the conversation was 'yes, we'll look at it' realizing there's a whole lot of water that needs to go under that bridge before we can get to the FBS level.

My Thoughts

It's clear that the main headline in the story that came out should have been that the WAC and the ASUN are combining in order to get a big enough conference so they will be able to get an auto bid into the FCS playoffs.

That in and of itself is a great step for UTU and a full conference schedule is supposed to start in 2024 which may be the first year they could get that automatic qualifier, though that isn't for sure yet.

The FBS part of it is more vague. It's clear that UTU has a goal to play at the highest level. But Beazer didn't put a timeframe on any move to the FBS.

Listen to the full interview for all the details...