Welcome to the Holy Score, a weekly assessment of Utah and Brigham Young football with no punches pulled or apologies forthcoming. If one of them stinks, we’ll tell you they stink. Most Utah and BYU fans are entirely reasonable — sarcasm alert! — but those who can’t handle the truth should read the message boards instead.
It appears The Decision will wait at least one week.
Kyle Whittingham said Monday that he will decide whether to return in 2025 following the conclusion of this season.
That conclusion is mere days away.
This is the first non-COVID bowl season since 2013 that won’t include the Utes, who were eliminated last week with a loss to Iowa State in the home finale.
Their date with UCF on Friday is the last game. Will it be the last dance for Whittingham?
A decision could come as early as Saturday morning, although that seems unlikely given the team won’t return to campus until just before dawn and Whittingham might want to decompress with family.
That said, we don’t expect the situation to drag into the middle of December because two critical roster-building dates are fast approaching:
— The early signing period for high school recruits is earlier than ever: It starts Dec. 4 and lasts three days.
— The transfer portal opens Dec. 9, and Whittingham expects “a heavy shopping season for us.”
That doesn’t mean Whittingham will be doing the shopping, however.
During his news conference earlier this week, the 65-year-old explained the stay-or-go decision “will be made on what’s best for the program, not what’s best for me. So, it’ll be completely determined on how I feel this program is best served going forward.”
In our view, that explanation is the answer: Whittingham will determine — if he hasn’t already — that a change in leadership would best serve the program.
That the retirement of a Hall of Fame coach would position the Utes for sustained success.
That the sport has changed to such an extent that a new voice and new vision and new outlook would set the Utes on course to thrive in the Big 12 and compete for bids to the expanded College Football Playoff.
Now, to be clear: The Hotline hasn’t been wrong about anything in at least seven minutes. We have no grand insight into Whittingham’s mindset beyond what can be gleaned from conversations with people in Whittingham’s daily orbit.
It’s possible that he plans to return for 2025 and perhaps a season or two after that.
It’s possible he will decompress Saturday, decide to retire Sunday, sleep on it for a few nights, then announce next week that he’s stepping down.
And it’s possible that he has been leaning toward retirement for months.
After all, the Utes announced in July that defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley had been elevated to the position of coach-in-waiting — a move that, notably, was seven months in the making.
In a news release dated July 1, Utah revealed that it had “entered into a new employment agreement” with Scalley in November 2023 — near the end of what was a taxing, disappointing year for Whittingham and the program.
This season has been even tougher.
It’s difficult to believe Whittingham would not have approved the change in Scalley’s employment agreement — for all we know, he initiated it — without thoughts of retirement beginning to dance in his head.
It’s also difficult to believe he knew last winter that this would be his final season.
Most likely, he took a wait-and-see mindset toward possible retirement at the end of 2024.
And if that was the case, has anything transpired over the past three months that would have convinced him to stick around?
No coach wants his final season to be a clunker. But as Whittingham knows better than most, college football unfolds on the razor’s edge. There’s no telling how any given season will play out. Something as innocuous as a quarterback getting pushed into a water cooler can change everything.
Whittingham is acutely aware that 2025 could be equally disappointing, thereby making the current struggles seem more like a systemic breakdown than an outlier.
Clearly, Whittingham believes dramatic changes in roster construction are needed to ensure the Utes recover quickly.
In addition to the remark about “a heavy shopping season” in the portal, he acknowledged the need not just for a new offensive coordinator but an entirely new approach to offense.
“Our formula was to recruit, develop and manage but with the turnover and the way the portal is, that system is very hard to make work,” Whittingham said two weeks ago during a news conference. “That plays into schemes too.
“You can’t have a scheme that is so complicated and in-depth that it takes a guy two or three years to learn because you don’t have that time anymore.”
A new approach to coaching offense.
An unprecedented plunge into the transfer portal.
A coach-in-waiting who participates in all key meetings.
Everything points to Whittingham becoming convinced that a major overhaul is “what’s best for the program.”
Our hunch is that he includes himself on the list of changes.
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