The Holy Score: On Utah's success, Whittingham's woes, the diminished fire and a separation that carries no joy

Utah climbed to No. 2 in the College Football Playoff rankings this week and continues to construct a resume that can stand with any in the country. Given the results and caliber of competition in the Big 12, the Utes are churning toward what might be the best regular season in school history.

And yet, the flawless record is even better than it looks.

The Utes are not 9-0, as the ledger shows. They are actually 10-0 ... if you count the divorce.

Utah 1, Kyle Whittingham 0.

That reality is presented without an iota of emotion.

In an ideal world, the Utes would be thriving under first-year coach Morgan Scalley, and Whittingham would be enjoying a successful season at Michigan.

It would be a win-win, not a win-loss.

But at this point, no other conclusion can be drawn. Utah is the frontrunner in the Big 12 and approaching lock status for the CFP under Scalley while Michigan is floundering under Whittingham — to the point that the unthinkable is morphing into the inevitable: Whittingham could be one-and-done in Ann Arbor.

We'll address the specifics of Michigan's situation momentarily. But context is required, for the sequence of events that unfolded last winter was complicated, fraught and frustrating for all involved.

After giving every indication he would step down following the 2025 season, Whittingham ran a reverse and determined he wanted to continue coaching. That change backed Utah's administration into a corner it desperately wanted to avoid.

President Taylor Randall and athletic director Mark Harlan determined they had no choice but to file for divorce from the future Hall of Fame coach. They could have relented. They could have given Whittingham another year. And another. And another.

How much uncertainty could one football program — one university — endure?

Would Whittingham spend the remainder of the decade lurching back and forth between retirement and coaching?

A situation that was not intended or designed to be messy instead turned ugly.

They had the chance to retain the man who won championships in two conferences, whose name was synonymous with the program and whose success in the late 2000s fueled the ascent into the Pac-12 that transformed not only the program but the school.

Instead, they traded one type of uncertainty for another and handed the program to a rookie.

The Utes took the risk and took the heat from fans and media. Goodness, did they take the heat. Local heat. National heat. Social media heat. Legacy media heat.

And for months, they had no shield. Utah was compelled by state law to disclose the divorce papers which, naturally, produced another wave of criticism.

Meanwhile, Whittingham was off to Michigan to stabilize the roiling program and guide the 2023 national champions back into the playoff.

The experiment has backfired stupendously. It could not have gone any worse, in fact.

Michigan's losses are mounting; the fans are irate; and the offense is offensive enough that Whittingham just fired play-caller Jason Beck, who had followed him from Salt Lake City.

What has gone wrong? Although it was difficult to detect at the time, the flaw in Whittingham's game is now apparent — and it makes everything make sense.

From here, it appears the fire is gone. Not gone entirely, perhaps, but diminished to the point that it impacted Whittingham's final years with the Utes and is undermining his first season with the Wolverines.

And so we wonder: Has Whittingham been the same coach since the deaths of Utah players Ty Jordan and Aaron Lowe?

In the immediate aftermath of the twin tragedies (Jordan in late 2020; Lowe nine months later), the Utes channeled the emotion and the energy to forge back-to-back Pac-12 championships.

Whittingham was both deeply impacted by their deaths and masterful in the manner in which he honored the players. But once that chapter closed and the emotions faded, was he the same coach? Did the competitive fire continue to burn with the same intensity?

Our theory, sequentially:

• Whittingham had every intention of stepping down after the 2024 season but didn't want a losing season to be his last, so he mustered the energy for one final fall.
• The 2025 season met his standards for success and set the stage for retirement. But for reasons only he knows, Whittingham changed his mind at the last minute.
• Upon realizing Utah was ready to move on, and with injured pride, he took the unexpected opportunity offered by Michigan and tried to relight the fire.

That is vastly more difficult than it seems against the backdrop of Michigan's expectations and the Big Ten's competition.

It has not gone well, and it has not gone well in a manner that suggests Whittingham's edges have been smoothed. In his public appearances and comments, he does not appear to possess the urgency required for the task. The losses are not cutting to the core. The win-or-else imperative is not evident.

To be clear: We are not suggesting Whittingham is merely going through the motions with the Wolverines. But the internal inferno required to meet the standard in Ann Arbor does not appear to exist.

On multiple occasions, he has committed the greatest of all sins, downplaying the rivalry with Ohio State.

Did Utah's administration see or sense a diminishment of urgency within Whittingham? Were there signs coming out of those tragic two years that his five-alarm competitive blaze had been reduced to a fire in the hearth?

Only Randall and Harlan can answer that, and they won't. They won't because the Utes are all-in with Scalley, focused on the present and not interested in rehashing the recent past.

Also, because there is zero joy for Utah in watching Whittingham flounder at Michigan.

For some fans, schadenfreude burns bright. But not for the people who know Whittingham, recognize what he did for the school over two decades of sustained success and understand the heartache he felt.

The Utes won the divorce. They got the kids and the house and the dog.

With Scalley in charge, they are ideally situated to thrive in the Big 12 and as well positioned as possible for the next round of realignment.

But what could have been a win-win situation is instead a win-lose reality.

In that, there is little joy.

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