Utah and USC aren't rivals and I wouldn't argue that. But I get why fans say they've had some tight games and that it's often a big game.

Similarly, we've got fans on this board arguing that Baylor should be our rival based on two games over the last 2 years (ignoring that Baylor already has a historic rivalry with TCU that involved Baylor burning TCU's campus down at one point)

Utah went into a situation with no natural rival, was assigned one (Colorado) and then was on a completely different level than them. So they're grasping at straws. Which is dumb...but human, and not that different from us talking about our naturally developing Big 12 rivalries. FWIW, I'd say we have more of a rivalry with USC than we do with any current Big 12 team.