Gordon Monson: The end of the Kyle Whittingham era in Utah has created three types of fans. Which one are you?

What follows here is meant as a message of hope, help and healing. Sort of. There’s a slight chance it could make everything worse. Either way, open your mind and then, at the end, your wallet.

Come on in, punch up a pillow and lie down on the couch. The doctor is in the house and the meter is running.

There are many places to start, but let’s commence with this: A lot of mystery is swirling around BYU and Utah football these days, and for good reason, for good reasons, all the reasons with which people who care about those programs have come in recent weeks to be more than familiar. In some cases, painfully familiar. What they — you — don’t know at present is the ending from the beginning. Which is to say, how it’s all going to turn out. Unknowns and uncertainties tend to be unsettling. And when folks are unsettled, it leads to anxiety and discomfort, and anxiety and discomfort lead to manifestations of all kinds.

One is abject negativity. Lashing out and thrashing about.

Kyle Whittingham feels less than wanted by the powers that be at Utah — a whole other psychological phenomenon — so he jumps aboard an opportunity at Michigan. This benefits him and it hurts others, showing those morons back home what they had, what they took for granted for so long, what they should have appreciated with more oomph, and what never should have been nudged away.

He takes a slew of valued and longtime Utah assistant coaches with him, including difference-makers like offensive coordinator Jason Beck and offensive line coach Jim Harding, defensive line coach Lewis Powell, among others. Not just that, but he swipes away from BYU highly respected coaches, such as defensive coordinator Jay Hill and cornerbacks coach Jernaro Gilford.

A path of carnage is left behind and all around and fog gathers yet ahead.

And we haven’t even gotten to potential player thievery in the transfer portal, guys like John Henry Daley, Smith Snowden and, at this point, who knows who else.

Disruption like that shakes up almost everyone. And those jangled nervous systems, at least for some, cause a level of … what’s the word, imprecation? Frustration? Infuriation?

Whittingham, who devoted more than three decades to Utah football, including 21 seasons as head coach, becoming en route the all-time winningest coach in school history, goes from people talking about naming the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium after him, about erecting a statue of him, darn near immortalizing the man for transforming Ute football to ionospheric heights, and then …

And then.

The guy is Judas. He’s not just a traitor, he’s vindictive, a monster trying to destroy a program that he cared about only as long as his name and ego were attached to it. And he’s Beelzebub himself to BYU, a program for which he played all those years ago, but thereafter became a rival whose name he refused to utter while coaching against it. In stereophonic sound now, from both the north and the south: What a jerk. What a punk. What a traitor. What an …

Assailant. Assaulter. Assembler. Assassin.

What an ingrate, now having the gall to stand in front of a crowd of Wolverine fans at a Michigan basketball game and shout: “Go Blue!”

You hope he fails. You do. You hope he loses. You hope he gets fired. You hope he never shows his face in Utah again.

Even worse, you’re worried about what will happen in the aftermath to Utah football or BYU football. A new first-time head coach installed, and so many new assistants up on the Hill; the loss of the best defensive coordinator, some think the best overall football coach in the state, along with his lieutenant who built so much success in BYU’s secondary.

Woe is me. Woe is us.

The world is ending around here — with the Utah program comprising the front end of the Titanic and the BYU program the back half sitting in debris some 12,500 feet deep at the bottom of the icy freeze.

The other manifestation is over-the-top positivity. Speculating with crimson-colored lenses on; nothing but royal blue skies ahead.

Not only has Morgan Scalley been preparing for and sitting on this Utah head coaching job for years now, he’s younger than Whittingham, smarter than Whittingham, more energetic than Whittingham, a better recruiter than Whittingham, a better motivator than Whittingham, a better evaluator of talent than Whittingham.

U. president Taylor Randall has already said that Scalley will “exceed” the standard set by the school’s best-ever, future-hall-of-fame coach. No pressure there.

And look at the staff he’s put together, filled with former players who care oh-so-deeply about Utah and fully understand what it means to be a Ute. This is going to be great. Greater than great. Ten times greater than great.

While tearing up, Scalley called himself “a baby,” but said his team will rip people’s faces off and compete for national championships along the way.

And at BYU, it wasn’t really Jay Hill that built that stellar Cougar defense, wasn’t Hill who had such a profound effect overall. It was a consortium of guys still inside the building — consultants and coaches like Gary Andersen and Justin Ena and Kelly Poppinga and Sione Po’uha and Aaron Roderick and Kalani Sitake himself. Everybody who’s anybody was and still is in the pool, splashing BYU to a two-year record now of 23-4 with nothing but green lights yet ahead.

Those lost boys are replaceable and everything is going to be all right, better even. And this condition is the one that may seem the most confident, on both sides, but that deep down is considerably less secure than they want to appear. Utes bash the Cougars, saying they are in the best position for sustained success moving forward. Cougars bash the Utes, saying Utah football, unlike BYU football, will never be the same now that KW is Audi-Five-Thou.

Utes say it’s the dawn of a bright new day for them. Cougars say it’s the dawn of a brighter new day for them. Outsiders reconfigure what Mark Twain said, all those years back: “No amount of [no] evidence will ever persuade an idiot.”

The third group, on the other hand — how many hands are there? — is conflicted and cautious, humble but hopeful.

This is the most emotionally mature bunch, humans, Utes and Cougars alike, who see things as they are, who recognize and acknowledge the coming questions and challenges given the changes at hand, but who find optimism in what’s transpired and what might be, what could be ahead. They don’t allow sudden dark bitterness to poison the past, nor silly absolutism to commandeer their outlook on the future.

Strangely enough, then, bits of the same uncertainty that stir anxiety and discomfort are actually healthier for the football soul than certainty that is founded on guesses and hunches, on biases and blind homer-ism.

How’s it all going to play out at Utah and BYU?

Nobody knows. And that’s what makes it a heady trip, a cool adventure, a rocket to ride, a worthwhile mystery.

There, now. Time’s up. You can leave five Benjamins in the jar by the door.