Coach Whit

Bottom line is, if Whit went 9-4 and the average scoreline was something like 45-42 instead of 24-21, he would have about half the critics that he currently has.

There’s a certain portion of our fanbase that thinks a coach is an abject failure unless he runs the Playstation offense and puts up 500+ passing yards, winning or losing be damned. Those fans were made that way by Urban Meyer and Dan Mullen.

They remind me a lot of BYU-P basketball fans.

^^^ truth ^^^

even our own AD was ready to pull the trigger on him a few years back.

I think most fans are ok with having that 8% net return every year, but every once in a while they want that kick ass 22% year. I’d argue he gave us that 22% year in 2008, and I fully expect we’ll see it again in the next few years.

Great post. I think no matter who the coach is, people will question him.

You are exactly correct. Winning in a P5 conference is damn hard, and Whitt has made improvements every year. I will state it is probably harder to win consistently at Utah than it would be at many other schools, and the success we have is based on the family atmosphere Whitt has fostered among the players and the fanbase (also the tremendous investments in facilities certainly helps). He does take an unfair amount of criticism. I have to wonder how much of it is based on certain local people who would love to see him take a job elsewhere.

On the other side of the coin are the fans who booed Chris Hill at the basketball game a few years ago when Whitt’s contract was in upheaval. That was one of the worst things I have ever seen from a fanbase, let alone ours.

The unfortunate truth is we just happen to have some s**tty people in our fanbase, who are unable to enjoy the good times.

Whitt takes undue s**t from the local slack jaws, but gets huge respect nationally. Same with Chris Hill. Any AD who does the things that Dr Hill has done here would have a street, building, holiday or astronomical feature named after him. We have to overcome the local theocratic dunderheadism in our own market. We will always have to walk the uphill path.

Its going to be a very sad day when Kyle retires from coaching football at Utah. I don’t think he will easily be replaced.

I think winning a Pac-12 title or even a division will get him over the hump with some fans and media.  Yes, the Utes have shown consistent progress, but fans have been left disappointed when hot starts turn into late-season fades and games are lost that seemed winnable (Cal, Colorad9).

He does take a fair amount of criticism, but so does every other coach in America sans a select few.  Fans aren’t always rational.  Go on ANY team’s message board and listen to the criticisms.  It seems like you are implying that Utah is worse than other schools in this regard.  It’s simply not true.

I love KWhitt as our coach, and I think he’s doing a great job.  There are, however, some legitimate complaints against him.  For example, the 9 OCs in 10 years debacle.  Why has it been so damn hard for him to keep a decent coordinator around?  This is a systemic problem, and it all falls on the HC.  Again, I really like KWhitt, but this the one area where he has shown some weakness, and is one of the primary reasons why we are the only P12 South team that doesn’t have a division title yet.

KWhitt is well paid and can handle the criticism, it’s LITERALLY his job to do so.  Relax and don’t worry about it.

Will love Whitt to my dieing breath. But he does need to take some criticism for how horrible this offense has been. Fans are frusterated because we have had a A+ D and A+ special teams with our D- to F O crushing our dreams every year. That being said local SLC media has dumped on him in the past. Nice to see the Trib getting better writers hope that turns around.