Utah vs. UCLA kicks off a new ‘embrace or die’ era for Kyle Whittingham and the Utes

It was a quiet afternoon in a Kansas City diner. As customers talked over plates of comfort food, Alex Whittingham sat across from his parents, Kyle and Jamie, idly scrolling on his phone.

Then, something caught the eye of the Chiefs’ special teams coach.

“We’re back in 2025,” read the post from the University of Utah football account.

Alex looked up from his phone, locking eyes with his father.

“Oh, so you’re coming back next year?” he asked, sarcastically.

“They finally announced that?” Kyle Whittingham said coolly from across the table.

The casual delivery of the news was fitting in a lot of ways. Those closest to the Utes’ longtime coach wanted him to return for his 21st season in charge. They expected it. They were “adamant that he keep going,” Alex said.

The coach felt that way, too.

“I couldn’t stomach going out on that, with that season, as frustrating as it was, and as discouraging as it was,” Whittingham said. “That’s not going to be the final act of my deal. I have to come back and try to get the ship right and get back on track.”

To do that, some things had to change.

The Utes would need to retool their roster — and they’d need more money than ever before to do that.

Whittingham, too, would have to embrace change, evolving from the coach who made a career of turning 3-star recruits into NFL prospects into someone who can turn roster turnover into an advantage.

And unlike former legacy coaches — Alabama’s Nick Saban or North Carolina’s Mack Brown — who have left the game in part because of its changes, Whittingham keeps coming back for more.

“It’s been an embrace or die kind of environment,” Whittingham told The Salt Lake Tribune.

‘The CEO of the program’

Isaac Asiata was wrapping up exit interviews in 2011 and was given an honest assessment of his future with Utah from his offensive coaches.

“They told me I’d never play a down in Division I football,” Asiata said. “And they told me once I got back from my mission, I should transfer and maybe go to JUCO or Division II.”

The Utes’ head coach then shared his own thoughts.

“You need to prove them wrong,” Whittingham said, according to Asiata. “You need to prove that you’re right.”

Over the next two years, while Asiata was abroad, Whittingham’s words stuck with him. When he returned to Salt Lake City, they were the driving force behind becoming an All-Pac 12 offensive lineman and a future NFL player.

“He never lowered his bar or standard,” Asiata said of Whittingham. “He was never OK with mediocrity.”

Finding gems in recruiting and developing them over a course of several years is how the head coach has built his program. In his career, the Ute coach has sent 123 players to the NFL.

But Whittingham will be the first to tell you the current landscape of collegiate athletics is different — more than it has been at any point in his career.

“It is a challenge, especially when you’re used to a developmental program,” Whittingham said. “It’s not completely out the window, but that has definitely taken a backseat to NIL and the play-now mentality.”

Former Ute coach and two-time national champion Urban Meyer took a visit to his former program last spring. He sat in on a few meetings at the Spence and Cleone Eccles Football Center.

There, even Whittingham — and his assistant coaching staff — discussed the constraints of the portal and NIL. It reminded him of 2004, when the Utes struggled to gather funds for a new indoor practice facility, which was eventually built later that year.

“You can make more money in college than you will as a mid-round draft pick,” Meyer said. “I still think you [can coach] culture to a degree, but maybe not as hard as in the past.

“I think now, Kyle, he’s at that kind of place right now where he’s certainly the CEO of the program.”

The new age is nothing Whittingham hasn’t seen coming. He’s had bold predictions since college football started shifting.

The real challenge, now, is finding a way to win in the new world.

“He’s elevated the place so high that last year is considered not a good year,” Meyer said. “All great coaches, the greatest ones I’ve been around, they’re just competitive maniacs, and that’s what he is.”

‘Doesn’t want to lose’

Inside Kyle Whittingham’s office sits a picture of Utah’s head coach skiing down a mountain, with powdery snow flying around him.

He showed the picture to Guy Holliday, Utah’s former wide receivers coach, one day. Whittingham then beckoned him to look at the metric on his watch. It read “78 mph.”

“He told me nobody would beat him,” Holliday recounted the moment. “That’s just who he is. You can always tell the grit he wears right on his face. The man doesn’t want to lose at anything.”

From skiing the slopes to golfing on the green and coaching on the sidelines, Whittingham wants to win at everything. He’s done it as Utah’s head coach for two decades. But the last few seasons have been below his standard.

After the season — one Whittingham called “a debacle” — the coach gave signs of his impending return in the way he stayed focused on recruiting, in the phone calls he made to colleagues.

Whittingham called Holliday multiple times to discuss the Utes’ options at the OC spot to replace Andy Ludwig.

“He was very focused on finding him an offensive staff,” Holliday said. “People were saying that they thought that he would retire. I never got that really from our conversations.”

In conversations with former Utes offensive coordinator Norm Chow, Whittingham weighed the thought of retirement but was aggressively surveying multiple offensive coordinators before the end of the season. He was also thinking about what prospects to go after in the transfer portal, according to Chow.

“As long as that door was open,” Chow said of his realization, “I thought he was gonna go back.

“There are only so many golf balls and tennis balls he can hit. He’s a competitive guy. … He just wasn’t ready to retire.”

‘Still going at it’

In the weeks after Utah’s season finale — a road win over UCF — Whittingham watched from his TV at home, as teams played in their conference championships and bowl games.

If he made the decision to hang it up, this is what his life would look like. No more meetings with agents. No more year-round recruiting and retention. No more worrying about NIL funds.

But Brady Whittingham sensed his brother had unfinished business.

“The luxury — and it sounds crazy, and this is just me — of being able to sit at home while other teams are out preparing … made him realize he couldn’t be done,” Brady said.

Meanwhile, the transfer portal gave Whittingham hope.

The constant churn of the portal and ever-growing NIL have certainly driven numerous coaches out of the business. “There are so many more different dynamics to the job than the ones five years ago,” Whittingham said. But he was also motivated by the opportunity to reload through the transfer portal.

Utah had $8 million in its NIL bank last season, according to Ute Athletic Director Mark Harlan. But the Utes had a “significant increase” in their funding pool with revenue sharing coming into play this season.

Still, they’ll be underdogs when compared to some of college football’s biggest spenders — the Texases and Alabamas and Georgias.

“I think that the teams that made the finals were upwards of $30 million. There’s quite a disparity there,” Whittingham said. “... That’s what everything hinges upon, your resources in that space to assemble a roster. It’s a constant challenge for us to try to keep up and keep pace.”

But it’s a problem Whittingham might have come to enjoy.

“This is my speculation, but I think the challenge of the transfer portal gives him the juice to prove that an underdog can also succeed,” Brady said.

Whittingham wasn’t ready to let a losing season be the final chapter. Still, he wouldn’t have come back if he didn’t believe he could climb the mountain one more time.

“If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t have come back,” Whittingham said this week.

He said he wouldn’t have returned if he didn’t have the “passion for the game and the energy. … Because you’d better have a lot of energy for this job.”

“So no second thoughts whatsoever,” he said.

With the offseason now behind him — and his retirement decision delayed for yet another year — Whittingham is back at Utah’s facilities focused on another season, one some believe will be his last.

His hopes for a storybook sendoff would then rely on transfer quarterback Devon Dampier and new offensive coordinator Jason Beck.

Whether he wins big or not, another decision looms at the end of 2025 — one only he can make.

And Alex Whittingham won’t be surprised either way, whatever the headline reads next winter.

“If they have a good year and he feels satisfied, I don’t know,” said Alex. “Two or three years ago, I thought that might be it for him. But he’s still going at it.

“I’ve learned not to guess what he’ll do next.”

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