OK, so there’s a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other regarding information coming to light about the breakup between former Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham and the university.

The problem is discerning the angel from the devil.

Maybe Joe and Jill Sixpack out there — namely, you — working 9-to-5 jobs, just trying to make a decent living for you and your family, would find that there is no angel here, only greedy, arrogant, self-interested, stubborn demons who couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Before we go any further, I’m already on the record from months back as saying it never should have come to this. Every effort should have been made by Utah’s bosses to hold onto the coaching legend, even if he wanted to stick around to coach a bit longer, even if that meant delaying or disrupting Morgan Scalley’s ascent, even if Whittingham wanted more money — for himself and for Utah football, which he did on both counts. It didn’t have to be messy like this. And Utah administrators ended up shelling out a truckload of cash for him, anyway, as he left for Michigan.

Now given new details on this clown show, go ahead and decide for yourselves who was the angel, who was the devil.

According to these documents, as it turns out, and as was apparent from the start, Whittingham most definitely wanted to return as the Utes’ head coach. And, yeah, he also wanted a pay raise in the neighborhood of $9 million, along with an NIL pledge of $20 million and a $2 million salary pool increase for assistant coaches.

Utah honchos offered him $8 million, along with a list of restrictions that slammed a brace on Whittingham’s reach within the program and empowered head-coach-in-waiting Scalley with final say on matters of recruiting, player personnel, a general manager, and other significant judgments and decisions involving the program. All staffing decisions would have to be signed off on by athletic director Mark Harlan.

Also, a babysitter … err, an administrator selected by the athletic department (Harlan) … would be housed inside the football facility.

On the one hand, what self-respecting coach would agree to that kind of oversight?

On the other, such decisions would reasonably put into absolute motion the transfer of power, affecting Utah football beyond the end of Whittingham’s stay.

On the other — how many hands and angels and demons are there, anyhow? — those stipulations screamed, among other things, that the university did not trust Whittingham, as though en route to his retirement, attendant with his intentions to float on a raft in a pool and play 18 holes of golf every day on Maui, he would purposely sabotage the program with stupid decisions, with decisions that could hurt Scalley when he took full control.

This is part of the answer to why Whittingham said amidst all of this back-and-forth that he felt if he stayed too long, people would get tired of him. They, in fact, were tired of him. Some of them. They wanted him gone, despite the fact that he was Utah’s all-time winningest football coach.

The good will stemming from the more than two decades Whittingham had spent as the architect and leader of Utah football at this juncture was stretched to the snapping point. There was little elasticity left, as viewed from either side.

The argument — my argument — can be made that Whittingham deserved to be treated with greater respect, that he should have been permitted to write his own ticket, in a modern coaching environment that called for that.

The argument also can be made that the U was rightfully fed up with Whittingham’s ongoing and annual indecision about whether he would go or he would stay.

The argument can be made that Utah should have just embraced and paid the legend, forced the capable Scalley to wait, while the old king eventually walked on his own accord.

The argument can be made that administrators and big-time boosters wanted Scalley to be elevated to the top job because they thought he actually could do it better, that Whittingham had already been delegating a heavy workload to others, that he was mostly an expensive figurehead, that despite the longtime coach’s fairly strong results in the 2025 season, they thought the new guy, with new ideas and a fresh outlook, would be an improvement.

When it became obvious that Whittingham was unhappy with the aforementioned setup and that he was stepping out the door — headed, as it played out, to Michigan — he and the university agreed to another deal, one that eclipsed a previous arrangement that would have handed Whittingham nearly $7 million over a span of two years as a program assistant, and granted him instead $13.5 million in a “transition bonus” offered out in three payments.

Let’s pause for a moment and regroup here. How are you feeling about that enormous stack of cash, money for nuthin’, all you Joes and Jills who are Utah fans, but who are just trying to keep a roof over your head and food in your kids’ mouths?

Are you blaming anyone on the administrative side for their clumsy actions or sarcastically crying for an indulged coaching icon who hadn’t yet won a Big 12 title?

When Whittingham bolted for Ann Arbor, taking various and important staff members with him, and then players, a feud broke out essentially about the harm the former coach was now throwing down on the Utes. Utah thought Whittingham’s moves were outside the bounds of what had been stipulated, the stipulation spelling out that he would aid the school with a “smooth and successful” transition.

Next thing, that dispute raged on as Utah paid the first installment of Whittingham’s transition deal — $8 million — and while the university went ahead and paid that first pile of money, Harlan wrote the former coach, informing him that the school was “disappointed by your actions.”

Harlan added that Whittingham’s position was that he figured the deal’s provision prohibited only disparagement, and the AD disagreed with that. Still, he wanted the spat not to be prolonged by the university. Utah, then, would finish out the payments, and simply look to the future and hope Whittingham would do the same.

Anybody feel better now with those details firmly in mind … or worse?

Who’s the devil? Who’s the angel?

Does Whittingham deserve tributes and adoration for his achievements at Utah?

Or is it his agent and attorney who bested Utah’s representatives, earning the real trophy?

Either way, it’s water under the bridge now. And it’s Harlan, you could presume, left with administrative egg on his face and bills to pay. It’s the richer-than-before Whittingham, at present the Michigan man decked out in maize and blue, who will one day enjoy that now bigger raft in a now bigger pool and maybe a golf course or two of his own on Maui.

A statue of his own at Rice-Eccles Stadium is less certain.