Perhaps you’ve heard the adage before: More games are lost than are won. It’s a common refrain in college football to explain how incompetence can lead more to the result of a football game than anything else. Every week there are score lines that are unexpected, and the trickiest thing about it is how small sample sizes can make for flawed takeaways. But digging into Week 1’s notable results, we here at SI are determined to find the answer to the question: Which team does the final score say more about?
Utah 24, Florida 11 says more about: Florida
Utah fans, do not take this as a slight, because this win was a testament to the program’s culture. Competence is simply in the walls in Salt Lake City. There’s no other way to square the fact that this team rotated backup quarterbacks, didn’t have its best offensive weapon (in addition to multiple other starters), yet was still able to manage the game effectively enough to put the Gators to bed without having to do too much on offense in the second half. Utah proved that they are who we thought they were, and you can add that to the list of times they’ve done so recently like the Pac-12 title game eviscerations of USC and Oregon in the last two seasons, or the regular season-hurting of the then-No. 3 Ducks (also in 2021).
