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Bookmark this link for The Southern Utah Tribune e-edition

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Bookmark this link for The Southern Utah Tribune e-edition


(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The first edition of The Southern Utah Tribune roll off the Ogden Standard printing press earlier this week.

The Southern Utah Tribune is being mailed to 40,000 homes and businesses in Washington County each month, no subscription needed, starting today.

The news offering is a sister product of The Salt Lake Tribune, staffed by reporters who live and work in southern Utah.

If you’d like to view the e-edition, which is a digital replica of the printed product, click here.

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This link can be bookmarked so you can reference whenever you like.

To sign up for a free weekly newsletter with updates from across southern Utah, click here.

And if you’d like to support independent news in the region, you can donate here.



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Key player for Arizona State listed as ‘doubtful’ for Utah game

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Key player for Arizona State listed as ‘doubtful’ for Utah game


The Big 12 shared the second batch of availability reports for Utah and Arizona State Thursday night, with a big name categorized as “doubtful.”

Sun Devils quarterback Sam Leavitt, who previously appeared under the “probable” tab on the initial availability report, was downgraded to “doubtful” two days before Saturday’s showdown at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

The surprise addition to the availability report means there will be a 25% chance that Leavitt, who’s yet to miss a game this season, will play in the Week 7 contest between the Utes and Sun Devils. Leavitt’s completed 63.1% of his passes for 1,039 yards and 8 touchdowns through five games this season.

Should the 6-foot-2 sophomore be unavailable for Saturday’s game, Arizona State will look to veteran signal-caller Jeff Sims to lead the offense, according to a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

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Sims, now in his sixth-year, played three seasons at Georgia Tech and one at Nebraska before transferring to Arizona State ahead of the 2024 campaign. He’s appeared in 36 games across his college career, including four last season with the Sun Devils. Sims has completed 57.4% of his pass attempts and has 31 career touchdown passes to 29 interceptions.

Arizona State already ruled true freshman Cameron Dyer “out” for Saturday in its initial availability report.

For the Utes, they’ve ruled out seven players for Saturday’s tilt, though it appears they’ll have Jackson Bennee after the two-way standout sustained an injury during the West Virginia game.

Out

Out

Doubtful

Questionable

Probable

Big 12 football programs are required to submit daily availability reports beginning three days before each game. The initial reports are posted on the league’s website at 8 p.m. MT.

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Initial report categories

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Utah vs. West Virginia picks, predictions for college football Week 5 game

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Utah vs. West Virginia picks, predictions for college football Week 5 game


A pair of Big 12 teams looking to get back on track clash in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Saturday, as Utah and West Virginia square off coming off disheartening losses.

While the Utes strive to put a 24-point defeat to Texas Tech behind them, the Mountaineers hope to completely wash away their lackluster outing against Kansas in their league opener, setting up an intriguing battle between two teams that need to get back in the win column if they want to keep pace in the ultra-competitive Big 12 title race.

Several outlets and media personnel have phoned in their picks for the Week 5 matchup at Milan Puskar Stadium. It’s worth noting, though, that the following predictions have been made without confirmation of the health status of some key players on both sides, namely, West Virginia running back Tye Edwards.

Here’s a look at how a few prognosticators foresee the Utes-Mountaineers matchup playing out.

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Bleacher Report’s David Kenyon, after predicting the Utes would beat the Red Raiders last week, has Utah edging out a 7-point win on the road in Week 5 to move to 4-1 on the season.

Kenyon’s prediction forecasts a much closer contest on Saturday in comparison to some of the other picks on this list.

After simulating the outcome of the Utes-Mountaineers matchup over 10,000 times, Dimers.com’s model gives Utah an 83% win probability, while West Virginia has a win probability of 17%.

ESPN’s matchup predictor has been more favorable to the Utes since the start of the season, and that trend continues heading into Week 5 as Utah boasts a 72.2% win probability rate over West Virginia.

The Utes, who previously had the upper hand in five of their 12 regular-season games heading into the 2025 campaign, according to ESPN analytics, are now the algorithm’s favorite to win six of their final eight Big 12 contests, with the exception of road trips to BYU (29%) and Kansas (38.1%).

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Bill Connelly’s SP+ model, a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measurement of college football efficiency, grants the Utes an 83% chance of beating the Mountaineers on the road. Connelly’s metrics-based formulas have accurately predicted three of Utah’s four games so far this season, with the exception of last week’s Texas Tech game.

Technically, Odds Shark’s computer predicts the Utes will score 33.6 points against the Mountaineers. But that’s not possible, thus the slight round-up.

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How the 2034 Winter Games can help Utah face its ‘troubling’ challenges

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How the 2034 Winter Games can help Utah face its ‘troubling’ challenges


Hosting a second Winter Games in 2034 is “an Olympic-sized opportunity” for the state, according to a new report released Tuesday by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

“Few single events in Utah history compare in reach and significance,” states the institute’s second “Keepers of the Flame” report, citing an estimated 15 billion viewer hours of coverage expected during the Olympics and the Paralympics that follow for athletes with disabilities.

That puts pressure on the state to tackle what the report described as “Utah’s Troubling Seven” challenges, just as the 2002 Winter Games pushed officials to deal with problems like I-15 gridlock and the need for more public transportation.

“Even with Utah’s well-documented exceptional economy, our state is changing fast. And even as Utah prospers, serious challenges pose a threat to Utah’s long-term success,” the report warned, but the 2034 Games can serve “as a powerful catalyst to make Utah even better.”

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Utah’s seven challenges identified by the institute are:

  1. Housing affordability and homelessness. Housing prices grew faster in Utah than anywhere else in the U.S. from 1991 to 2024, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, while the number of Utahns without homes reached a record high this year.
  2. Traffic congestion. Delays on Utah roads between June 2016 and January 2025 grew four times faster than the state’s population, based on six-month moving averages.
  3. Third grade reading proficiency. Considered “a leading indicator for future educational success,” proficiency remains below 50% statewide
  4. College graduation rates. The share of Utah high school graduates enrolling in higher education has dropped in two of the past three years, while half of the state’s eight degree-granting institutions report completion rates below 50%
  5. Water and Great Salt Lake. “Lower water levels put at risk the benefits created by the lake and threaten Utah’s long-term economic, ecological, and human health,” the report said, and “represents one of Utah’s greatest international and national reputational risks”
  6. Energy supply. Utah, like the rest of the country, is facing increased power demands due to growth, energy intensive industries and artificial intelligence, and the need to replace aging plants
  7. Behavioral health. Utah is third in the nation for adults with serious mental illness, and the fourth for those with serious thoughts of suicide, the report said, while the “share of Utah young adults with poor mental health more than doubled in the past 10 years”

Before billions tune into Opening Ceremonies at the University of Utah’s Rice-Eccles Stadium on Feb. 10, 2034, the 44-page report offers starting points to address those challenges, such as creating a statewide community land trust, as “a quick and effective way to lower housing costs” and prioritizing connected autonomous vehicles to ease traffic congestion.

Other “consequential ideas” to be considered are placing reading pros in K-3 classrooms, expanding career-oriented “catalyst centers” into Salt Lake County, conserving up to 500,000 acre-feet of water annually, investing in a state energy research fund, and aligning behavioral health efforts and investments with Utah’s strategic plan.

Insights in the reports that are intended “to help guide Utah and leverage the Games” begin with a call for the state “to lead with dignity,” in “a time of significant polarization and mean-spirited, sometimes even violent, expression and actions.”

Next is tapping in to Utah’s younger generations, followed by focusing on long-term goals at the community level and catalyzing private innovation and investment, possibly through creating an impact fund that could provide both societal benefits and profits.

Utahns stepped up for the 2002 Games, the report noted, with estimated private and public investments in transportation, resorts, venues, housing, hotels and other areas that were made to benefit the 2002 Games add up to $7.25 billion in 2024 dollars.

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While about $4 billion of that amount went to rebuild I-15 and add TRAX light rail lines along with other transportation projects, the list also included spending for ski resort and Salt Palace expansions, new hotels and Olympic venues, and a public safety communications system.

Thanks in large part to the work done in the decades before and after 2002, this time around, Utah can claim seven “major achievements in the state’s economic success story,” the report said. Dubbed “Utah’s Magnificent Seven” achievements, they are:

  1. Economic dynamism and diversity. “Utahns have built the most impressive economy in the nation,” the report said, highly diversified with more than double the national average real GDP growth over the past decade
  2. High household income and low poverty. Adjusted for regional price parity, Utah’s 2023 household income ranks the nation’s highest while the state’s three-year average poverty rate from 2021 to 2023 is the lowest, at 6.7%
  3. Upward mobility. Utah is one of only three states nationwide to hit top levels of upward mobility in every county, according to Opportunity Insights at Harvard University estimates
  4. Widespread prosperity. Utah “exhibits the most equal distribution of income in the nation,” according to a Census Bureau measurement
  5. Well-trained and educated workforce. Utah had the nation’s third highest share in 2023 of adults aged 25-64 with postsecondary training, including from trade and technical schools
  6. Fast growing population and youthfulness. Utah’s population increased 18.4% between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, a faster rate than any state in the nation. With a median age of 32.4 in 2024, Utah also has the nation’s youngest population.
  7. Social cohesion. Utah had the highest level of social capital among the state in a 2021 Utah Foundation study of more than 30 measures “in the broad categories of family structure, community participation, and economic mobility.”

The institute’s director, Natalie Gochnour, said the state is positioned to take advantage of another Winter Games.

“The global spotlight of the 2034 Games provides a powerful motivation and deadline for Utah to make strategic investments and pursue innovative solutions to many of our state’s most troubling challenges,” Gochnour said. “By proactively addressing our challenges and building on our strengths, Utah’s Olympic legacy will extend far beyond the Games.”



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