- Kyle Whittingham may retire from Utah football after a successful season.
- Whittingham, Utah's winningest coach, wants to avoid ending on last season's note.
- Morgan Scalley might succeed Whittingham, with Devon Dampier as the new quarterback.
SALT LAKE CITY — Piecing together his own logic, Kyle Whittingham could well turn over the reins of the Utah football program to Morgan Scalley after this season.
Admittedly stirring up retirement talk each time he's broached the subject in recent years, Whittingham is now on a year-to-year basis.
When he stops, nobody knows.
Obviously, as all coaches do, he wants to go out a winner. One thing is for sure, no way he could have quit after last season's disaster.
"Last year was so frustrating and so disappointing, (I) just couldn't have said OK, that's it," Whitingham said during Big 12 media days two weeks ago. "I just couldn't walk away on that note. It was the most frustrating year of my coaching career. I would have never been able to come to terms with that, to have that be the last of a career."
Hard to blame the winningest coach in Utah history for not wanting the forever stain of a 5-7 season as his final memory. But maybe another excellent campaign could push Whittingham into retirement and allow Scalley to evaluate from his long-held position as the defensive coordinator.
We shall see but count on this: The 2025 edition can't be worse than the prior year.
Last season was all kinds of miserable, to the point the significant positive was it finally ended. Never in his 20 years as a head coach has a Whittingham team entered a season with such promise only to plunge into the depths of despair.
Large factions of the fan base, along with many well-regarded analysts, anticipated another conference championship for the Utes. This time, though, the payoff was making the new 12-team playoff with a legitimate shot at competing for a national championship.
The two most recent conference championships, via winning the Pac-12 in 2021 and 2022, resulted in two Rose Bowl appearances, accomplishments that were mighty fine enough. Each time they came with Cam Rising, who had missed the entire 2023 season with a knee injury he suffered in the second Rose Bowl game, at quarterback
Rising, who entered his seventh season of college football last year as the unquestioned leader, was finally healthy after going through half of the 2023 season with at least a glimmer of hope to play. Frustration funneled throughout the program with each game he missed, leading to Whittingham saying the decision to play was up to "uno doctor," in reference to Rising's personal surgeon.
Surely, with Rising back, the thinking was the Utes would dominate the newly formed Big 12, which Utah had no choice to join after the Pac-12 collapsed under the weight of failed leadership. The plan remained intact until Rising's misguided attempt to evade multiple Baylor tacklers in the second game.
A late hit, which for unfathomable reasons wasn't called, sent Rising crashing deep into the Baylor sideline and smashing off a water bucket. The collective gasps heard throughout Rice-Eccles Stadium correctly resonated with the thoughts of "oh, no, not again."
Rising gamely tried to gut it out five weeks later in a loss to upstart Arizona State, a team Utah destroyed 55-3 the prior season, but this wasn't the same player who brashly quarterbacked the Utes to beat-downs over national powers USC and Oregon. His Utah career was over and so was the season.
Included in the casualties were offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig, who resigned during the season, and two of his coaches. New Mexico coordinator and former BYU backup quarterback Jason Beck was hired along with Mark Atuaia (running backs) and Micah Simon (receivers).
Beck brought in quarterback Devon Dampier, a dynamic athlete who rushed for 1,166 yards and passed for 2,768 yards. The combination of coach and player, along with a skilled offensive line that features potential NFL first-round draft picks Spencer Fano and Caleb Lomu, has the Utes thinking big again.
"I'm excited about this team," Whittingham said. "I think we've got a good group coming (and) got a lot of things going for us."
For much of the last two years, speculation swirled that Rising and Whittingham would go out in glory together. Maybe now the coach, who turns 66 in November, will align with the new quarterback — but hold on, Dampier is only a junior.
