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Utah announced its first nonconference games of the 2021 and 2022 seasons Wednesday, a home-and-home series with former Mountain West Conference brethren San Diego State.
The two teams will meet at Qualcomm Stadium on Sept. 18, 2021, and at Rice-Eccles on Sept. 17, 2022. Utah athletic director Chris Hill was at Pac-12 meetings and unavailable for immediate comment Wednesday afternoon.
The teams haven't met since 2010, when Utah required a dramatic 14-point fourth-quarter rally to edge the Aztecs. Utah is 17-12-1 all-time in the series and has won five straight.
The Aztec dance card has been filled up of late by out-of-area Pac-12 teams seeking exposure in Southern California. They're fresh off a home-and-home with Oregon State in 2013-14 and began another this year with Cal, followed by Arizona State in 2017-18, Stanford in 2017-18 and Arizona 2021-22. SDSU will also play a home-and-home against UCLA in 2019-20.
Having recently signed a deal to play BYU in 2019 and 2020 and said to be working toward 2021-22 deals with their longtime rivals, the Utes still have two spots free in 2020 and at least one in 2021 and 2022.
Their future nonconference opponents are as follows:
2016 • Southern Utah, BYU, at San Jose State
2017 • North Dakota, at BYU, San Jose State
2018 • Weber State, at Northern Illinois, BYU
2019 • at BYU, Northern Illinois, Idaho State
2020 • BYU
2021 • at SDSU
2022 • SDSU
2023 • at Baylor
2024 • Baylor
— Matthew Piper
Twitter: @matthew_piper