Utah’s football team will play the 19th-toughest schedule in the country this season, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index. Life gets only more difficult for the Utes after Thursday night’s opener vs. Weber State at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
That's not to say the Wildcats will make things easy for Utah, just that starting the season with an FCS opponent by definition makes the rest of the year more challenging.
You'll hear a lot from me this season about the FPI, the ESPN formula that ranks teams and assigns a probability level of winning and losing for each game – projecting the entire season.