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SALT LAKE CITY — The two quarterbacks walked off the field side by side after practice last week, sharing a bond as teammates but also competing for playing time for a position where all but one watches during games.
Little did Tyler Huntley know Jack Tuttle would leave the Utah football program the next day, apparently no longer willing to wait his turn. And so, after two years in the making, the highest-rated quarterback recruit in Utah history was gone.
Midway through his freshman season, after committing to the Utes well before his senior year of high school in California, Tuttle bolted without ever playing one down in college. All the considerable time and effort, including countless amounts of money, went for naught.
“I was kind of hurt he left, but I understood why he left because that happens,” said Huntley, surprised at Tuttle’s abrupt departure. “He’s a good player, and wherever he goes, he’s going to be good.”
Just not in Salt Lake City.
So it goes in the world of college football, and even basketball, where transferring has become a revolving door. As BYU coach Kalani Sitake noted, it happens everywhere.
Coach Kyle Whittingham thought his Utah program had something special in Tuttle, a quarterback who one Pac-12 analyst compared favorably to the NFL’s Matt Ryan. Yogi Roth labeled Tuttle as a future first-round draft pick.
During the recruiting process, both sides pledged to be each other’s one and only. Tuttle and Whittingham stayed true to their promises, meaning Utah signed only one quarterback in the last recruiting class.
Meanwhile, two Utah high school quarterbacks — Cameron Cooper of Lehi and Zach Wilson of Corner Canyon — in last year’s class signed elsewhere. Cooper is at Washington State, while Wilson — whose father played at Utah — is starting at BYU.
It is not a stretch to say Tuttle’s commitment cost Utah one or both of the local quarterbacks. To make matters worse, Utah is not known as a state that often produces Division I quarterbacks.
Whittingham, whose program has struggled to lure highly-rated quarterbacks, took a philosophical approach to losing his prized recruit. But the disappointment had to be great.
“You recruit them one at a time and you’ve got to keep recruiting them while they’re with you and try to hang on to them,” he said. “And some positions are more prone to transfer than others. In this day and age of football, to say that you’re going to have anyone leave the program, that’s unrealistic.”
Truth is, coaches also have to recruit the player and his associates. In many cases, this includes the player’s father, who often takes an active role in his son’s football career.
Keeping the dad and the kid happy often is far more difficult than the original recruitment, especially for quarterbacks. In Tuttle’s case, neither was possible.
Not that Whittingham could do anything about it. Easy come, easy go only applies to the latter and not the former.
“You want guys who want to be here and represent the school the right way,” Sitake said.
In the end, Sitake said, it is worse to keep a player who wants out. In his case, Sitake has no problem releasing a player, as he proved in signing off on starting linebacker Frances Bernard’s transfer to Utah.
“I think the important job the coach has is to be honest with the young man, where they see him fit and the role that they have,” Sitake said. “If they don’t see eye to eye, I think it’s OK for people to move on. I’m fine with that.”
Not that he has much choice, really.
