- Utah Tech's 2025 season-opener release put a fifth-year quarterback with Iowa starts at the top of the depth chart, giving the Trailblazers a real profile heading into their Big Sky transition.
- Deacon Hill, Utah Tech Football connect back to Utah Tech University and the wider football picture.
- The story is backed by 3 sources and a visible last-verified date.
April 2, 2026
April 1, 2026
5 min / 1,015 words
3 official links
Utah Tech Football opens 2025 with Deacon Hill — a 6-foot-4, 247-pound fifth-year quarterback from Santa Barbara, California — listed as the veteran returning arm in the program's season-opener release. The Trailblazers are in their final Western Athletic Conference year before joining the Big Sky for 2026-27, and a quarterback with nine FBS starts and a Big Ten Championship Game appearance on his record arrives at the top of the depth chart for the conference farewell.
Utah Tech's August preview lists Hill among the program's three returning passers and credits him as the senior who came back from a season-ending 2024 injury. The school's release supplies the verified career line: 1,152 passing yards and five touchdowns at Iowa, plus 412 passing yards and two touchdowns at Utah Tech before the 2024 injury that ended his fourth college season early.
The Wisconsin and Iowa years
Hill's first college home was Wisconsin. He signed with the Badgers as a high school quarterback recruit out of Santa Barbara — one of the country's quieter recruiting markets for FBS quarterbacks — and spent his early college years inside Wisconsin's program. He left without a starting line on the Badgers' record.
The transfer to Iowa changed that. Hill arrived in Iowa City inside the Hawkeyes' quarterback room as a developing backup, then was thrust into the starting role mid-season when injuries opened the depth chart. The Hawkeyes credited him with nine starts inside the 2023 season, including the Big Ten Championship Game against Michigan — the game that sent the Wolverines into the College Football Playoff en route to their national championship run.
His Iowa production line carried specific markers from that 2023 season. The 1,152 passing yards and five touchdowns came across the nine starts, which translates to a quarterback the Hawkeyes' run-first offense used as a game manager. Iowa's identity in 2023 was defense and field-position football, and Hill's role inside that scheme was to avoid the catastrophic mistake rather than chase the deep ball.
That experience — Big Ten starts, a conference championship game, the deep-into-November intensity of Iowa's defensive-led offense — is the résumé Utah Tech now has at the top of its quarterback room.
The 2024 Utah Tech season
Hill transferred to Utah Tech for the 2024 season as a graduate quarterback inside the WAC. The Trailblazers' coaching staff signed him to provide veteran experience to a quarterback room that needed an FCS-ready starter.
The early returns were strong. Through eight games in 2024, Hill posted 412 passing yards and two passing touchdowns. The numbers per game were lower than his Iowa per-game totals, which the Trailblazers' coaching staff has attributed publicly to the offensive-scheme differences between a Big Ten game manager role and an FCS lead-passer role.
The 2024 season ended on injury. Utah Tech's official medical release at the time confirmed a season-ending injury that closed Hill's year early. The redshirt status preserved his eligibility for the 2025 season, which is why Utah Tech's August preview can list him as a returning fifth-year senior quarterback rather than a graduate-eligible newcomer.
The injury recovery details have not been disclosed publicly in the school's general release stream. What the 2025 preview did establish is the cleared-to-play designation that put him back on the active roster heading into the season opener.
The 2025 Utah Tech season
The Trailblazers' 2025 season is the program's final WAC year. The conference itself has shrunk in recent realignment cycles, and Utah Tech announced its move to the Big Sky in 2024. That makes the 2025 schedule the program's farewell tour through the WAC's current membership.
Utah Tech's season-opener release framed the year around returning experience. Hill is the most visible part of that return. The roster line — 6-foot-4, 247 pounds, fifth-year senior, Santa Barbara native, Iowa transfer — gives Utah Tech the kind of veteran quarterback most FCS programs would be glad to feature.
The Trailblazers play their home games at Greater Zion Stadium in St. George. The southern Utah location places the program inside a unique geographic niche — far enough south that most WAC and future Big Sky opponents require flights or long bus rides for travel, but close enough to Las Vegas and the Mountain West footprint that recruiting and scheduling have built-in regional anchors.
The Big Sky transition for 2026-27
Utah Tech announced its Big Sky football membership in 2024. The conference's full FCS schedule means annual games against Weber State, Southern Utah, Idaho State, the Montana programs, and the rest of the Big Sky's western footprint.
The conference move is one of the cleanest examples of regional realignment in FCS football right now. Utah Tech is moving from a stretched, two-coast WAC schedule into a conference whose games sit inside a single time zone and a handful of Western states. The change shortens travel costs, raises rivalry tension with the other in-state programs, and gives Utah Tech a conference identity built around regional in-state matchups.
For Utah readers, the Big Sky move is especially significant. The conference's three other Utah-program members — Weber State, Southern Utah, and Utah Tech itself — produce annual matchups between programs sharing the same recruiting pipeline. Hill's 2025 role gives the program a credible quarterback profile heading into that transition.
What's next
The Trailblazers open 2025 with their full WAC slate. Utah Tech's 2025 schedule includes the WAC's remaining members and a handful of non-conference dates that the program has used to test against in-state and regional opponents.
The Big Sky transition takes effect for the 2026-27 season. Hill's eligibility window aligns with the WAC finale, which means the next time his name appears in an official Utah Tech football update will likely be a 2025 game recap, a midseason depth-chart announcement, or — depending on how the conference farewell unfolds — a postseason awards mention from the WAC's final season.
For Utah Tech's program record, this is the most credentialed quarterback the Trailblazers have started in the WAC era. The 2025 schedule will decide whether the senior season delivers the production line the Iowa résumé suggested it could.
