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SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah's first season in the Pac-12 hardly went as planned.
Yet, in the end, the overall record of the team, 7-5, wasn't far off from what most fans expected heading into the season. How they got there, though, was certainly a surprise and no one could have ever imagined the path they would take to get to those seven wins - and it certainly wasn't an easy one.
Which is funny because for the first three weeks the Utes looked like they were building a solid case as Pac-12 South favorites. They had opened the season with a routine win over Montana State, barely lost, on the road, to USC and then gave their rival a historical whooping en route to a 2-1 start. There was certainly optimism that this year's Utah team was primed for a pretty strong run through conference play.
Then Washington happened.
The Huskies game was supposed to validate what Utah had done the three weeks prior. It was their first-ever Pac-12 home game, it was Homecoming and they were coming off a bye-week - where Kyle Whittingham was undefeated as a coach. Instead of validating the season, though, it was this game that nearly wrecked it.
In the first half, quarterback Jordan Wynn went down and seemingly so did the Utes' chances of having a respectable year.
After Wynn's injury, and the subsequent loss to Arizona State a week later, it seemed highly unlikely Utah would even contend for a bowl game, let alone a division championship. In fact, it was in the smoldering moments of this disaster that Whittingham essentially conceded the division to the Sun Devils - not because he was giving up, but because the hole just seemed too big. Two weeks later, after a horrendous loss to Cal, the Utes would drop to 0-4 in Pac-12 play and barely looked capable of even finishing on the positive side of .500.
If you were a Ute fan, you probably came close to mailing in the rest of the season.
Fortunately, the team didn't. They came out of that Cal game more determined than ever to do something. One win turned to two and two to three and just like that, after all the crepe-hanging and fear of a losing season, Utah had secured their ninth-straight bowl game. Not only that, but Arizona State's implosion atop the South opened the door for a potential division championship. Who would've thought that possible in the waning seconds of their 34-10 loss to the Golden Bears earlier in the season?
That's the kind of season it was, though - a yo-yo with decent highs, some pretty devastating lows and barely anything remotely stable.
So, I guess in hindsight, the loss to Colorado makes perfect sense. The Utes just weren't destined to finish on a high note. This season seemed to be about tasting success, but failing to capture it. They didn't after their 2-1 start and they didn't after their four-game win streak essentially put them in the driver's seat of the Pac-12 South.
But it's hard to consider this season a failure. Especially in the context of everything. Losing Wynn was devastating. His replacement, Jon Hays, was essentially a vagabond because his Division II program, the one he was expected to lead this season, decided to cut football. The way this season played out, the Utes' ability to come back from the brink, is even more remarkable when you realize a bulk of it happened under the leadership of a quarterback who probably was ill-equipped to run a Pac-12 offense.
Even so, it's hard to ignore the Colorado game. If there is one thing that will hang over this season, it's that. Utah had the division handed to them on a silver platter and they couldn't get it done. It's one of those losses that you hope, ten years from now, you're not wondering, "What if?"
How much of an impact, though, did that loss have on Ute fans' opinions of this season?
#poll
Over at Block U I asked my readers what they would grade the overall season. Most did agree the Colorado game took their grade down a notch, but ultimately, I think the consensus is that this season was fairly successful. It could have been more, there is no debating that, but in the end, with all that happened, to be as close as the Utes were to the Pac-12 Championship Game, it's hard to get too down on this year's Utes.
In fact, almost 70 percent of voters ranked this season a B-minus or better - with that B-minus receiving the highest vote total.
Not bad.
Reader UtahMariner said he felt not many coaching staffs could put together a seven-win season under similar circumstances. UnHolyRam felt the season was a mild success, as he predicted 8-4 with a healthy Wynn.
That's not to say everyone was happy. LeftCoastMan gave them a C because they flunked the Colorado exam, which certainly brought down their overall grade and overshadowed a win against BYU and a close defeat to the Trojans.
Ultimately, it seems most Ute fans agree this season wasn't as bad as it probably should have been, but definitely difficult to fully accept because of how close they came to playing for a spot in the Rose Bowl.
But even with that tough loss, it was still a remarkably exciting year. Clobbering BYU is always great. Taking USC to the wire in the first-ever Pac-12 game, even in defeat, was special. Watching John White IV run all over Pac-12 defenses, well, it doesn't get any better than that. But I was most impressed by Utah's ability to bounce back from a very difficult start. It showed the true character of not only this team, but its coaching staff. When all looked lost, the Utes pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and forged ahead when I'm not sure anyone thought they could.
That should definitely make for a compelling second year.
