This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Kyle Whittingham missed his YouTube moment.
The opportunity was teed up for Utah's football coach, who was asked during his weekly news conference if Saturday's meeting with Arizona State qualified as a championship game in the Pac-12 South.
Whittingham could have launched into a rant about how his team, winless in conference play, possibly could be competing for a division title. He just chuckled and said good-naturedly, "You can't do that without getting your first win."
It is amazing, though, what that first win could do for the Utes. They immediately would join the South race, having beaten the top contender (with USC ineligible for postseason play). Conversely, a third conference loss would all but eliminate the Utes from Rose Bowl consideration and turn their first Pac-12 season into merely a fight for bowl eligibility. Utah would need four wins in its last seven games to qualify.
This game will produce a huge swing, one way or another. If fill-in quarterback Jon Hays can deliver an upset of the No. 22 Sun Devils, Utah's outlook will change dramatically. Otherwise, Whittingham will be trying to salvage a potentially lost season, as was his regular position early in his head coaching career.
If the Utes lose this game, falling to 0-3 in the league, a flashback to those days seems inevitable. Whittingham already is fighting against inflated expectations — maybe not quite to the degree of 2005, when he dealt with the pressure of following Urban Meyer's 12-0 team, but in the same ballpark.
"I don't know if people thought we were going to come in and take the Pac-12 by storm and just walk through it. That's not reality," Whittingham said in his news conference, repeating, "That's not reality."
Just the same, more reality like last weekend's 31-14 loss to Washington would not play well at Rice-Eccles Stadium, where the Pac-12 anticipation drove a 98 percent season-ticket renewal rate.
So that's how much pressure awaits a quarterback who was supposed to be facing the University of Sioux Falls this weekend, if everything had gone as planned. Instead, Nebraska-Omaha dropped its Division II football program, Hays landed at Utah and Jordan Wynn injured his non-throwing shoulder last weekend.
"You talk about a plan and fate and everything else, there's not a better way to explain where [Hays] is right now," said Jeff Jordan, his junior college coach. "That part makes it a neat story."
If Hays pulls off this upset, he would make Brett Ratliff's '05 victory over BYU after a sudden promotion seem routine. Ratliff was facing a 6-4 opponent with a lousy defense, nothing like ASU's. Yet there's something about Hays' engaging personality and competitive nature that inspires confidence in him, whether that's justifiable or not under these circumstances, at this level of football.
"He's a fighter, for sure," Jordan said. "He loves the competition."
And Utah needed him, at least as Wynn's backup. The Utes have produced more success stories among quarterback recruits than any school in the country lately. The trouble is, they don't all play that position.
The careers of defensive end Paul Kruger, linebackers Chad Manis and Brian Blechen and receiver DeVonte Christopher turned out nicely. The same cannot be said yet of Griff Robles, who switched back to QB from linebacker this week, and Tyler Shreve, who was promoted to No. 2 quarterback in Wynn's absence.
Because those two struggled in the spring, Hays is here, in this position. At stake in his debut as a Division I starter? Only the whole season, nothing more.
Twitter: @tribkurt —
Tale of two schedules
Utah quarterback Jon Hays spent the winter semester at Nebraska-Omaha, before the school dropped football. Here's how UNO's proposed October schedule compares with Utah's:
Date UNO Utah
Oct. 1 Truman State Washington
Oct. 8 Sioux Falls Arizona State
Oct. 15 NW Missouri Pittsburgh
Oct. 22 Fort Hays State California
Oct. 29 Pittsburg State Oregon State