The task for Springville, Hurricane and Davis will be tough.
In today's high school football state championship games at Rice-Eccles Stadium, those three teams will be prohibitive underdogs.
Two of those teams, Springville and Davis, would be pulling off all-time upsets with wins, when they face off against Timpview and Bingham respectively. And that makes their job difficult, if not impossible.
For all of that, however, being the favorite is just as tough. Tough on the coaches who have to get their teams to focus. Tough on the players as well, when it comes to attending to the task at hand.
"It's obvious who Bingham is," Davis coach Ryan Bishop said. "They're everything, they're great on both sides of the ball. But one thing that we've always done is try to make it about us and no other team. We want to improve our team, we want to play within ourselves. That's not a disservice to Bingham, that's just who we are and how we hope to approach football games."
This is what it is for the championship round. Last week in the semifinal round, there were marquee matchups in Bingham facing Alta, Park City facing Hurricane, and Mountain Crest facing Timpview. The matchups were so good that many thought they were good enough to be championship games.
Today's games have the opposite feel. Springville, coached by former NFL and Utah quarterback Scott Mitchell, will have to play extremely well to just be competitive with Timpview, which has been absolutely dominant since losing to Alta and Pleasant Grove to start the season.
The Darts have a better chance just because Tanner Hinds, as a running back, has been as good a player as there is in the state during the playoffs. Plus, Davis defeated Pleasant Grove in the Class 5A quarterfinals, which is important because the Vikings have the kind of size and athleticism that's comparable to Bingham.
Dave Peck, the Miners' coach, is fully aware of that fact. He also knows that his team has been the best in Utah this season. The deepest, the most talented, the most explosive.
"I know people think that we're going to blow them out, but I honestly could care less what people think," Peck said. "This is about us. We've got one more game left in this season to prove that we are the best team. We need to take advantage of that. We've had a great season, but it honestly doesn't mean a thing if we don't go out and take care of business this week."
If there is a game that's projected to be close, it's Hurricane and Juan Diego. It's a rematch of last years game that went down to the wire, and both teams are aware of that and eager to match up against the other.
"It's really hard to find a weakness in Juan Diego," Hurricane coach Chris Homer said. "They are so well rounded it's scary. They are great in all three phases of the game."
