Thunderbirds

Eccles Coliseum holds a modest 8,500, and inside it Southern Utah plays out a program that has spent most of its history chasing the rest of the Big Sky rather than leading it.

The nickname has outlasted three different conference homes. Southern Utah won the American West Conference in 1993, the Great West in 2010, and after settling into the Big Sky picked up back-to-back titles there in 2015 and 2017. Each of those seasons ended the same way: a trip to the FCS playoffs and a first-round exit, in 2013, 2015 and 2017 alike, three appearances and three losses.

Braxton Jones came out of that program and went on to start at tackle for the Chicago Bears, while Miles Killebrew built an NFL career at safety after leaving Cedar City. Their presence in the league says something about the level of player Southern Utah has produced even while the team around them struggled to turn conference form into a playoff run.

Two rivalries frame the schedule: the Battle for the Ax against Utah Tech and the Beehive Bowl against Weber State. The conference picture has shifted again recently — Southern Utah left the Big Sky in 2022 and is set to rejoin it in 2026, a round trip that says less about ambition than about the instability of conference realignment in the FCS ranks. What the Thunderbirds have not yet done, through all of it, is win a playoff game.