Kyle Whittingham is leaving Utah as its head football coach. In an era of coaching movement, Whittingham was a foundation piece; he has been the Utes’ head football coach for 21 years. Given his accomplishments at Utah, he coached in relative obscurity; consider:
- In 21 seasons, his teams had 18 seasons with winning records
- His Utah teams went to the Rose Bowl twice
- His overall record was 177-88 – – winning percentage = .668
- His teams finished in the Top 25 nationally 10 times.
Kyle Whittingham seems like college football coaching’s version of “Where’s Waldo”. All he did was to put competitive teams on the field year after year without much fanfare or histrionics. He is 66 years old and Utah was his only college head coaching job; it seems to me that he has earned his retirement.
I am also impressed by the way Utah seems to have handled this retirement; if they did not know about it ahead of time, their announcement of Whittingham’s replacement demonstrates a good degree of succession planning. Taking over for Kyle Whittingham will be Morgan Scalley who has been on the Utah coaching staff since 2008 and who has been the Utah defensive coordinator for the last 10 seasons. As best I can tell, Scalley’s entire coaching career has been at Utah under Kyle Whittingham so there is continuity in the “turnover”. Morgan Scalley is currently 46 years old, so the Utes have the potential for continued coaching stability over the next couple of decades.
Moving on – – but staying with college football … Arch Manning announced that he will not declare for the NFL Draft this year but will return to Texas in 2026. Some folks have reacted to that announcement with surprise even though statements attributed to Manning family members all during the season have indicated that he would return to college in 2026. Let’s be real for a moment:
- Even in the days of NIL, top shelf college football players can look to the NFL Draft as a life-changing economic opportunity.
- Arch Manning is included in that category, but he comes to it from a level of family wealth/comfort that is not necessarily equivalent to many other top NFL prospects.
- I make of all this that Arch Manning is a young man who says what he means and means what he says. Good for him.
Switching gears … The NY Mets are turning over their roster in this MLB offseason. They let Pete Alonso sign on with the Orioles; they lost closer Edwin Diaz to free agency; they traded away Bandon Nimmo. In return for Nimmo, the Mets got Marcus Simien who is a good player but is also 35 years old; in return for Alonso and Diaz, the Mets got diddley-squat. Given the financial position of Mets’ owner Steve Cohen, economics and “affordability” do not make a whole lot of sense to me, so I was wondering what the thinking might be here.
This morning there is a report that Mike Francesa – – the sports radio legend on WFAN in New York – – said that there was friction in the Mets’ clubhouse last season and that the reason was that some of the players were for President Trump and some others were against President Trump.
On one hand:
- Mike Francesa is closer to the Mets organization than I and he has a track record of sports reporting.
- Politics in the US today is completely polarized and can cause ruptures in families so it is not impossible to imagine that it might create problems for a team.
On the other hand:
- If you take a random sample of 30 people (same number as the 25 players and 4 coaches on an MLB team), it would be next to impossible to imagine that you would come up with political unanimity of thought in the group.
- So, how come this caused turmoil with the Mets but not with any of the other 29 teams?
Finally, the Kyle Whittingham announcement reminded me of Brad Rock – – the now retired sports columnist from the Deseret News. Here is one of Brad Rock’s great lines from his column there, Rock On:
“OK, so the NBA champ is from Canada and the NHL champ from the U.S. What everyone really wants to know is who gets to claim curling?”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………