This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
After the best performance of his college career, Utah's Britain Covey walked off a football field with his worst feeling in more than two years.
No doubt, the Utes had become accustomed to winning — especially Covey. The freshman receiver, who played brilliantly in a 42-24 loss to USC with two touchdown receptions and a spectacular punt return leading to another score, had not lost a football game since August 2013. That's when his Timpview High School team fell 21-19 to Pleasant Grove in the second game of his junior season.
"This feeling that we have right now," Covey said Saturday in Los Angeles, "you just don't want to feel it again."
He rarely does. Prior to that defeat, Covey owned a 32-game winning streak as a Timpview quarterback and Utah receiver, while playing for the Whittingham brothers, Cary and Kyle. Covey remains unbeaten in his life at Rice-Eccles Stadium, where the high school semifinals and championship games are annually played, and where the No. 13 Utes (6-1) hope to regroup Saturday vs. Oregon State.
So after what he described as a rough weekend of living with a loss for only the third time in four seasons, Covey framed the Utes' bounce-back opportunity with his Timpview experience. "This is cool," he said, warming to the subject. "At the time of the Pleasant Grove loss, it was awful. Our team was distraught. … At the end of the year, we looked back and realized how necessary that loss was for us. It helped change our mindset, helped us make the necessary changes. I don't know if we wouldn't have had the same season without that loss."
Well, of all the adjectives Ute fans may have considered for describing the loss to USC, "necessary" probably was not among them. "Inevitable" is probably a better label, in a college football landscape where, as Kyle Whittingham predicted Monday, no team may go unbeaten this season.
That's why Whittingham purposely remained positive in the locker room and in his postgame news conference, not wanting to lose his team after one defeat. In contrast, the last time the Utes stood 6-1 with a top 20 ranking in late October, he was fed up.
Whittingham made major changes in 2009, taking away the play-calling duties from his offensive coordinator and then benching his starting quarterback and bringing freshman Jordan Wynn out of redshirt status. This week? Nothing new, other than maybe giving the football to Devontae Booker a lot more often.
That's the difference between winning and losing. In this case, Whittingham needed to remind the Utes of what remained in front of them. Covey applauded his approach — "especially because of the spot our team is in right now," he said.
Covey recently tweeted a favorite John Wooden quote: "You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."
Or, as Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said after losing to Utah, "If somebody tells you you're the greatest team ever, that's not true. If somebody tells you you're the worst team ever, that's not true."
OK, so the Ducks responded by losing to Washington State in their next game, but the lesson is important. Jerry Sloan never was viewed a masterful psychologist in his Jazz coaching days, yet that may have been his greatest strength, looking back. Sloan always demanded more from his teams when they were winning, but he publicly defended his players during the tough times.
After his latest defeat, Whittingham said, "All is not lost." His sentence structure was flawed, but the message got through. Something was lost, because the Utes no longer were unbeaten and, as of Sunday, out of the AP top 10 after spending a week at No. 3. He meant to say that not all was lost, and that's true.
After those two August losses, in 2012 and '13, Covey's Timpview teams won state championships, so he's eager to see what becomes of 2015. With five games left in the regular season, the Utes can win the Pac-12 South title, play in the conference championship game and advance to the Rose Bowl — at the very least.