Style points. Not a slam-dunk. An at-large bid. Forget about that. Chaos. Hard to count on. A conference championship game. Tough to imagine. A Utah win. That the Utes can relish, sort of, and remember.
If Friday’s game against Kansas really was Kyle Whittingham’s final regular-season contest as coach at Utah, it wasn’t exactly the kind of football the man favors. It was partway there, but only partway. Part way and either way, it resulted in a 31-21 Ute victory.
And Whittingham would take it, even if it ate away at part of his football soul. Loose parts everywhere here.
The longtime coach has a week before he contractually must inform his bosses what his intentions are for his — and their — future. Will he go on coaching? Will he float on a raft in a pool somewhere? Next week, that will be a big day, a big decision, a big deal. Whittingham likely already knows what he’s going to do — maybe, maybe not — but he’s left everybody else guessing.
If his team always played the way the Utes did against the Jayhawks on the road on this occasion, he might have left the building long ago — for the sake of his own sanity. Utah gave up 477 total yards, 290 on the ground — after yielding 472 rushing yards a week ago. The offense was dull for — yeah — part of the game, collecting just 18 first downs to Kansas’ 26. It had nearly a hundred more passing yards than it got running the ball. But enough happened toward the end, on both sides of the ball, to put the game away.
Generating three turnovers helped, including two interceptions in or near the end zone, one setting up a counter TD, one returned for a 96-yard pick-6. Those most definitely gave balm to the Utes’ ailments. Couple that with 414 offensive yards of their own, and, if this was Whttingham’s last seasonal bow — or second to last — then his sentence was punctuated with half a grin.
On the other hand, with the coach hauling in annually in excess of $7 million, it’s only human that walking away would be with both a grimace and a grin.
The happy news is that Whittingham, after the postseason, can move on to the rest of his life, an existence he says is “blessed,” with the call of wonderful family and friends, fairways and stacked-high finances beckoning. The coach has repeatedly said he wouldn’t work the sideline into old age, and with his 66th birthday in the books a week ago and a good mind and good health still in place, whatever he does next is likely to be just as good, maybe better, than what he’s lived through in his stellar Utah career.
And he’s lived through a lot. Some downs, mostly ups, a whole lot of ups. When he took over from Urban Meyer in 2005, Whittingham had lessons to learn and learn them he did. As he once laughingly put it, “Smart guys know in the beginning what dumb guys don’t know until the end.”
Whittingham conquered the ins and outs, the intricacies of his job in the middle. He’s won more games than any other Utah football coach. He’s won conference championships. He’s gone to Rose Bowls. He’s guided undefeated teams — Utah’s best ever as defensive coordinator in 2004 and the second-best ever as head coach in 2008. It can be said, on account of both his success and his longevity, that Whittingham is the best football coach the Utes have ever had. Think about that. Uh-huh, Urban’s stint was too short.
The intensity that has burned within him throughout still burns, but also has been tempered a little through the seasons as Whittingham matured, as the lead dog turned gray. Remember when he got mad about Wyoming coach Joe Glenn predicting at a school pep rally that the Cowboys would beat the Utes? And so, Whittingham exacted his revenge by calling for an onside kick in the third quarter when Utah was up, 43-zip. Glenn responded by flipping off his rival coach.
“My emotions got the best of me,” Whittingham said later. He would never pull such a stunt now. He might win big — and the Utes have enjoyed lopsided victories this season — but not like that.
His emotions continue to run hot — sometimes aimed at players, sometimes aimed at his assistants, sometimes aimed at himself. But since abridged, at least in part — part, part, part — Whittingham has used his focus and fire to get his job properly done.
“When I was young and brash, some of the things I did …,” Whittingham once told me, his voice trailing off, “… I’m a little more polished now.”
A lot more.
Last season, the polish wore a bit thin. A losing season at that juncture was a bitter disappointment. And he returned to do better this time around, looking for a much better ending.
Sitting now with the Utes at 10-2, and a postseason game of some kind yet to be played, Whittingham can stand proud — at both his body of work and the way it finished, if it is, in fact, finished.
We’ll see. Whittingham has said again and again: “As long as I love doing this, I’ll keep doing it.”
But there are the other things, foremost among them people — already mentioned — in his life he loves, too, people with whom he’d like to spend more time. Perhaps those people want him to keep coaching, too. Who knows.
Meanwhile, defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley waits in the wings. He’s already been ordained as Whittingham’s successor, and he’s eager to take over. While Scalley’s defenses have been mostly effective, they have left much to improve on in recent games, including Friday’s. He has always said, like a lot of DC’s do, that stopping the run is his top priority.
Well. That’s something the Utes have failed at — last week and this. The Jayhawks ran all over them, making them look silly over the middle part of the field. On Utah’s plus side, KU was not able to take as much as it might have had it converted more efficiently in the red zone. It had a number of trips there, without results, including the interceptions that pretty much did in the Jayhawks.
That said, the Jayhawks embarrassed Utah’s defense by way of an assortment of runs behind all kinds of space created by their offensive front. It’s weird to see the Ute resistance kicked around like that, especially by a 5-6 team fighting for no more than bowl eligibility. That weirdness, though, has become a trend. So has the offense coming to the rescue. It is what it is — a puzzlement to coaches, players and fans alike. It runs counter to everything Whittingham has built at Utah, getting punished physically.
Still, if the coach exits, he should and will be celebrated. He won’t make a show out of his departure, that’s not his way. But what he has accomplished at Utah is nothing short of phenomenal. Not perfect, but phenomenal.
His career at Utah? That, come what may, the Utes can relish and remember.
