Undefeated, Unchallenged: Storybook season ends with big victory

TEMPE, Ariz. — Utah's quest for perfection is complete.

Saturday's 35-7 win over Pittsburgh in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl capped a 12-0 season for the Utes, who made quite a splash in their Bowl Championship Series debut.

"In today's day and age of college football going undefeated is hard to do. There's a lot of great teams out there," said head coach Urban Meyer, who finished his two-year stint at Utah with a 22-2 record. "It's hard to say goodbye, but I'm saying goodbye 12-0. What a great effort by our guys. This is the best group I've ever been around."

Utah quarterback Alex Smith and wide receiver Paris Warren were named co-Offensive Players of the Game and nose guard Steve Fifita claimed defensive honors.

"It wasn't an easy game," said Warren. "We just executed well in all three phases."

The offense shined with 467 yards and 25 first downs. Smith completed 29-of-37 passes for 328 yards and four touchdowns. Warren scored twice and caught a Fiesta Bowl-record 15 catches.

Defensively, the Utes racked up nine sacks while limiting the Panthers to just 268 yards. Eric Weddle led the way with a game-high 11 tackles and Tommy Hackenbruck had three sacks.

"We blitzed them a lot. We gave them a lot of different looks," said Fifita. "I don't know how to explain the pressure we got. We just saw openings and took advantage of them."

Besides a convincing performance on the field, they also did well in the stands. A vast majority of the sellout crowd of 73,519 at Sun Devil Stadium wore red in support of the BCS busters. Utah is the first team from a conference without an automatic bid to participate in one of the system's financially lucrative bowl games — the expected payout is between $14-17 million.

Smith said the victory sent a message to the establishment.

"Hopefully that college football needs a few changes," he said. "That's been the mind set all along."

Utah received the Fiesta Bowl championship trophy in a postgame ceremony on the field. Amidst the celebration, the large contingent of Ute fans chanted "undefeated" to the team and "one more year" to Smith, who is contemplating a jump to the NFL and its riches.