Arizona
Arizona football at Utah score predictions
Welcome to the Big 12, Arizona! Your first assignment: hit the road to take on the preseason favorite, which also happens to be a team you often struggled to beat while in the Pac-12.
The Wildcats (2-1) begin their first season in the Big 12 with a visit to 10th-ranked Utah, where they haven’t won since 2014. Arizona beat the Utes (4-0, 1-0) last season in Tucson but have dropped three straight in Salt Lake City.
How will Arizona do in its first Big 12 game? Our staff makes its predictions.
Kim Doss — Utah wins 35-21
Like Arizona’s game against Kansas State, this one looked like a loss coming into the season. Also like the last game, nothing has happened since the season started to make that early prediction seem unlikely.
Utah is giving up about 20 points per game to its brethren in the Big 12. Arizona is averaging 30 this season against lesser competition. The 20-point neighborhood seems far more likely for the Wildcats in this one.
The Utes have averaged 33 points per game, about seven more than Arizona has allowed. With the Wildcats’ defensive struggles, Utah should be able to get their average.
Ezra Amacher — Utah wins 38-21
The optimist in me wants to say that Arizona spent its bye week fixing its woes on offense and will come out Saturday with a great game plan to against Utah’s vaunted defense. The realist in me knows that whatever progress Arizona may have made on the offensive side of the ball won’t translate in any real way. It’s important that Arizona shows some level of competitiveness and not a repeat of what we saw against Kansas State. If not, fans are going to turn on the coaching staff in a hurry.
Adam Green — Utah wins 37-24
Going into the season, back when there was great optimism for Arizona, this one was penciled in as a loss. Utah was bringing back an excellent team and figured to have Cam Rising at QB, with the veteran’s 24 seasons of experience proving valuable to the Utes’ cause.
Unfortunately the Wildcats haven’t done much over their first three games to make you think they can go to Utah and win, even if Rising doesn’t actually play. The Utes are incredibly tough in the trenches and will be motivated to return the favor after Arizona beat them up pretty good in Tucson last season. The guess here is the Wildcats will play their best game of the season, lose, but have us feeling better about their chances the rest of the way.
Brandon Combs — Utah wins 45-31
I believe that Arizona will be improved coming off the bye week. That said, it is hard going into Salt Lake City and winning on the road. Utah’s lines on both sides of the ball are stout. If Cam Rising is playing, it’ll be up to the UA d-line to get enough pressure on him. If it’s Isaac Wilson, the defensive line will have to contain. The defense has yet to prove it can do either effectively or consistently. Couple that with we have no idea what the offensive line will do. Still, I do expect to see improve from Arizona, just not enough to overcome the Utes in SLC.
Juan Serrano — Utah wins 38-24
Arizona is facing the second part of their early season test. They failed the first part in their loss to Kansas State. Now heading to Utah, they will be pushed to the brink. The offense needs to find itself again, and the defense needs to show that they can handle the physicality that Utah is going to bring. Noah Fifita took all the blame this week for the offensive struggles. I believe the offense is not going to stay in this rut that they’re in and is going to be in sync this week.
However, Utah is an established program. They are a team that performs well at home. A black-out at Rice-Eccles Stadium and a lot of physicality from the Utes will be too much for Arizona to handle. Utah gets revenge from last season.
Devin Homer — Utah wins 31-24
There could be some bad blood after last seasons Arizona win over Utah, 42-18. UA threw a deep pass down the sideline and added a garbage time touchdown, which I’m sure Utah will remember. Arizona will be looking to get back on track after its last loss to Kansas Sate, luckily for UA it didn’t count for a conference game and its conference record is a clean slate.
Utah at home will be tough to beat and you add on UA hasn’t shown enough throughout the first three games to give me confidence that an upset will be possible.
Brian J. Pedersen — Utah wins 30-16
This is both the best and worst time for Arizona to be playing the toughest opponent on the 2024 schedule. It’s great because the Wildcats are coming off a bye, and thus were able to presumably get healthy while also address the many issues that have popped up over the first three games. But it’s bad because this was a likely loss going into the season, even before cracks started appearing in the dam. It may be hard for the UA to show progress while also losing, but the No. 1 goal in this game should be to keep it competitive and not look like a team that hasn’t learned from its mistakes.
A new study has ranked Arizona as one of the worst states to move to for two years in a row, largely due to what it calls a poor quality of life.
The study conducted by Consumer Affairs analyzed the best states to move to in the United States, putting Arizona at the bottom of the list.
Before Arizonans get too defensive about the Grand Canyon State, Consumer Affairs used factors such as affordability, safety, economic strength and education to measure each state, leaving out factors like entertainment, retirement benefits and other considerations that may be important to people living here.
Popular states such as California and New York also landed at the bottom of the list due to their lack of affordability, even though they both have some of the best health care and education in the nation, Consumer Affairs noted.
Here’s why the study says you shouldn’t move to Arizona. Do you agree?
Why you shouldn’t move to Arizona
Arizona ranked No. 10 out of the worst states to move to, scoring especially poorly in quality of life.
Quality of life was measured by the state’s Social Progress Index, average air quality, weather, environmental protection and number of national parks. Due to Arizona’s extreme summers and Phoenix’s consistently poor air quality, it’s easy to see why Arizona ranked No. 44 in quality of life out of 50 states, even though the Grand Canyon is one of the most popular national parks in the nation.
However, Arizona also ranked poorly in other categories, sitting at No. 42 in health care and education, No. 41 in safety and No. 34 in affordability out of 50 states.
There was one category Arizona did impressively well in, ranking No. 5 in economic strength even as one of the youngest states in the country. Still, Arizona’s economic power wasn’t enough to boost its ranking.
Top 10 worst states to move to
Arizona wasn’t alone; some of the biggest states in the country were also considered the worst states to move to in 2026.
- New Mexico
- Louisiana
- California
- Arkansas
- Oklahoma
- Nevada
- Alaska
- Mississippi
- Oregon
- Arizona
Top 10 best states to move to
- Utah
- New Hampshire
- Idaho
- Minnesota
- Massachusetts
- Maine
- North Dakota
- Pennsylvania
- Iowa
- South Dakota
PHOENIX — Arizona’s ACA marketplace enrollment fell from 363,000 to just over 255,000 in a single year — a nearly 30% decline and the third-largest annual drop in the country.
Rising premiums and expired tax credits are driving the trend, with the average benchmark plan premium in Arizona now at $532 — up 30% from 2025.
In the player above, ABC15 Data Analyst Garrett Archer takes a look inside the numbers on how healthcare premiums are impacting health insurance enrollment.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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Arizona
Arizona man pleads guilty after illegally living in forest for years among ‘1,000lbs of trash’
A man in Arizona has pleaded guilty to violating federal fire restrictions and unlawfully residing in a national forest, after authorities said he spent years living at a makeshift campsite surrounded by what officials described as “approximately 1,000 pounds of trash”.
Mark Aaron Gatz was arrested on 25 June at his illegal campsite in Arizona’s Tonto national forest, according to court records. A United States Forest Service (USFS) officer wrote in documents submitted to court that Gatz had been operating an “illegal campsite” with a “hot wood burning campfire” despite fire restrictions and that he had told investigators that he had been living in the forest for about eight years.
The officer wrote that a records check found that Gatz had previously received multiple citations and was the subject of six outstanding federal arrest warrants for earlier violations, including for building fires during fire restrictions, constructing on national forest service lands, unsanitary conditions and occupying national forest as a residence.
Gatz “said that he knew about current fire restrictions but had to have fire to eat”, authorities said. The documents show that USFS officers made contact with Gatz multiple times over the last year or so, and issued him warnings as well as a violation notice for having campfires during fire restrictions.
Notes from officers’ previous encounters with Gatz earlier this year, submitted into the court docket, state that authorities observed “trash such as clothing, pans, tools, and plastic cups scattered throughout the campsite along with a structure that was four feet in height build using wood panels”.
During an encounter with Gatz in May, officers reported observing “approximately 1,000 pounds of trash” at the site, which they said included tires, plastic bags, trash bags, aluminum cans and other items. They also wrote that they found that the campfire site had been left unattended by Gatz the previous day while still hot.
In a separate report filed by law enforcement from an encounter in February, one officer wrote that “upon arrival at the camp, I was flabbergasted by the amount of debris in the area”.
Investigators said that during that encounter, the debris consisted of three ladders, six to eight totes “overfilled with debris”, five 55-gallon drums, eight tires, multiple bicycle frames, 5 gallons of motor oil, plywood and other “miscellaneous lumber”, and they wrote that trash was scattered over approximately half an acre of Forest Service land and creating what officers described as public safety concerns.
In a separate report from July 2025, officers said they observed what they described as a “large messy campsite” while patrolling the area due to complaints “from the district office abut one large messy camp”.
“There was roughly half an acre of resources ruined due to so much trash and goods on the ground for an extended period of time,” the officer wrote.
This week, after Gatz pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to time served and three years of probation, according to court records.
A representative for Gatz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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