In Salt Lake City, everybody knows who Kyle Whittingham is. The Utah head coach is in his 11th season with the Utes after taking over for the great Urban Meyer, and the program, just like any other, has had its ups and downs.
The ups have been pretty good for Whittingham and company, including a 2009 Sugar Bowl victory and an 8-1 bowl record. He has participated in 174 victories as either an assistant or head coach at Utah, with 89 of those coming as a head coach. With win No. 89, Whittingham has passed Ute coaching legend Ron McBride, and that victory over the Ducks may have been the biggest.
Or at least the biggest road victory. Some would point to the UCLA victory last season where the Utes upended a top-10 Bruin squad, or a number of other road wins in Whittingham’s tenure, and I don’t mean to belittle those, but in my opinion, this road win has got to be the biggest on his résumé to date. Let me tell you why.
After Utah’s 62-20 shellacking of Oregon on Saturday, the largest home-loss for the Ducks in Eugene since 1977, there was an outpouring of compliments and positive remarks made in regards to the Utes.
ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit tweeted out that he has the Utes knocking on the door of the College Football Playoff as his sixth-best team in the country.
Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports echoed Herbstreit’s sentiments by tweeting the following on his official Twitter account:
Feldman took it a step further later in the night by saying the Utes have a case for the No. 1 spot in an article he wrote for FoxSports.com.
It’s not as far-fetched of a claim as you might think. In the new AP poll, released on Sunday afternoon, Utah received a first-place vote from John Adams, a reporter from the Knoxville News Sentinel in SEC country. This wasn’t a mirage, or an illusion — the wide consensus is that Utah is not only a legitimate Pac-12 contender, but maybe a CFP contender as well.
Time will tell whether or not the Utes can capitalize on such a victory to ride this wave of momentum the rest of the way, but tell me this — when was the last time people around the country were talking about Utah this much?
The issue of playing in the Mountain West and not being recognized is a problem of the past. The Utes are front and center by playing in the Pac-12 South division, and if they have a big win everyone will know about it. Again, there have been big wins for Whittingham since entering the Conference of Champions, but this was a 42-point blowout to the defending national runner-up in Oregon — in Eugene , in front of a sold-out Autzen Stadium.
This was a big win over an elite program, and Utah has found its way on to everyone’s radar just four weeks into the season. That reason alone is why this is the biggest road victory of the Whittingham era.
@GriffDoug