John Canzano on Locked on Utes

[//r00t4Utes]

I’m not here to promote or give opinions on the show, but share this episode of the podcast. As to me, I enjoyed John Canzano’s takes and opinions and helps keep things a bit in perspective.
YouTube Link for this that want it.

[Yergensen]

This from Alex Markham, Cam’s hand still not healed/fully functional today. So, what was he doing playing against ASU only weeks after injury?

Markham

[Asmitty]

Because a large group of our fan base was making his life a living hell. Spare me the “but he was getting paid”.

[2008 National Champ]

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true about making his life a living hell, but if it was it was enabled by the way his injury and his previous injury were handled. Both in 2023 and 2024 the word from Whitt and the rest of the staff was that he was always a game-time decision. And since a “large group of our fan base” takes every word that comes out of Whitt’s mouth as holy writ, when he wouldn’t play in games he became the focus of those same fans’ ire.

The policy of not talking about injuries unless they are season ending has bitten Whitt on the tookus the last 2 years and I’ve never seen it be the competitive advantage that he seems to think it is.

[Utegator]

Exactly this. 2 years of “game time decision” when they knew it wasn’t is what became an issue.

[Utah#1]

IMO, Whitt hasn’t been open or transparent about much regarding the program over the past few years. Whether the fanbase had a right to know or not about Rising’s status whether it was his injury or him refusing to play because he just didn’t want to or didn’t care anymore, who knows? I just think Whitt handled Cam’s situation very poorly along with the QB room situation over the years. The whole “game time decision” became a meme joke that backfired on him. I also think he poorly handled last year’s QB situation keeping Wilson in longer than he should have. Whether or not he trusted Wilson enough to die on that hill for himor he was being forced to by NIL agreement is unknown. It was apparent he should’ve tested the waters with other QBs in the room regardless if they didn’t do well in the camps. Sometimes players do better in live game competition than they do in practices or spring scrimmages. I just think Whitt waited too long until he had no choice but to play Rose. Unfortunately Rose got hurt again and wasn’t in long enough to win the game and earn himself a victory. I just feel Whitt can sometimes be his own worse enemy. What the Whittingham school of hard knocks has taught me is, I stopped take anything he says at face value and will judge for myself if what he puts on the field passes the eye-ball test.

[//r00t4Utes]

I personally never had an issue with it. And while I understand people wanting to know and not liking not knowing, it surprised me how much it blew up and how big of a deal it became.

Kinda theory vs. practice, in theory, there should’ve been no issues with Whitt’s decision, but then we all found out in practice that was not the case.

[Rick]

Champ and Gator,
I don’t mean this to argue with either of you about Whitt’s handling of the Rising situation the past two seasons. I think it could have been better, especially last season more from a personnel standpoint. We simply did not have the right back up.

I do think a lot of us forget context from Coach Whitt’s perspective. I talk to fans all of the time who forget that Rising had three seasons ruined by injuries, not two. Remember that he started against USC and experienced a season-ending shoulder injury 15 to 20 plays into the first game (in the first quarter). He had earned the starting position over Jake Bentley.

The next season Whittingham made what I think was perhaps his worst decision as head coach. He started Charlie Brewer over Cam Rising. I don’t know that Utah would have defeated BYU but we surely would have defeated SDSU.

I’ll get to my point. I think Coach Whitt will forever regret that decision. I think it weighed significantly on his handling of Rising the next two seasons. Whitt knows what a winner Rising is, and he never wanted to doubt him or put him behind anyone again. He wanted him on the field.

I realize that this is an apologist viewpoint, but I believe it’s fundamentally what has driven Whitt’s thinking about the QB situation until the leg injury against ASU.

On a related note, think of Rising having to rehab and return from so much injury. The physical and mental toll must be brutal. I admire him. I also don’t fault Whittingham as much as others given the context above.

[2008 National Champ]

Rick, I think you’re making my point with the 2020 injury. Whitt didn’t have to announce Rising’s injury, but it was made clear that it was season ending. We all moved on to the next option instead of speculating on when QB1 would be back.

Counter that with 2023 where after 4 weeks of “he’s splitting 1st team reps” and “we’re doing everything we can to get him on the field”, they went to the extreme of suiting Rising up at Oregon State for pre-game warmups. Which, as we found out ~ 3 weeks later, was all a ruse because he still hadn’t been fully cleared by his surgeon.

I hold no ill will towards Rising and I am still glad Whitt is coaching Utah. But this has all been a self-inflected error. So, to circle back to @Asmitty, both Rising and Whitt were willing participants in the subterfuge(s).

[Rick]

I get it Champ. I just don’t know that it’s subterfuge. I see that it could be. I’m just saying that Whittingham was driven by knowing two things – he wanted Rising on the field if at all possible, and the U didn’t have a suitable backup.

[The Miami Ute]

I’m hoping someone, probably Rising, eventually writes a tell-all book about what happened behind the scenes during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. I’m guessing that if he does, it won’t paint many people within the program in a good light. I can only refer to what I, and others like Chingiskhan, said once we found out, in early summer 2023, the extent of Rising’s Rose Bowl injury; that Utah should have said “Thanks for all you’ve done, Cam,” and moved in another direction at that point. But that didn’t happen. Why? Well, that’s an easy answer. It didn’t happen because Utah was addicted to the glory that Cam brought to it, and Cam was addicted to the million-dollar NIL payday that playing QB for the Utes brought him. It was a mutually destructive relationship that essentially sabotaged two complete football seasons for the program. But hey, I’m still a fan, I still have season tickets, and I still hope that the team does something special in 2025.

[Caleb]

Yes. Whitt is the reason fans could not trust what was going on because he has to live this secret code that gives his team zero advantage.

I never agreed with the fans who started going after Cam but the coaches did him no services by teasing his return with goofy, “well we sure hope Cam plays…” week after week.

In fact, Cam actually forced Whitt’s hand during the 2023 season with his interview on Bill O’Reilly’s Show. Cam was pretty open, much to the chagrin of the coaches, about how severe his injury was after we spent weeks being told he was just a week away. Surprise, within a few days of that interview, Whitt announces Rising is out for the season.

Last year was a bit different because they didn’t expect him to be out the season like they likely thought the year before. But it was still a game and felt like an exact repeat of the year before.

Whitt plays these games and it just sets the team up to fail.

[Jim Vanderhoof]

Hiding injuries and giving false hope to fans and media is not a good look for the program or for the injured players. The “competitive advantage” is overblown. You don’t think ASU knew Cam couldn’t throw?

If you’re going to play “next man up” mantra quit playing games with players heads. Get the backups ready to play and be honest about the severity of the injury. That takes the media and fan pressure off the players. A QB is not a middle linebacker. They have to be handled different. We finally have an OC that understands the position and the mental aspects.

[The Miami Ute]

I subscribed to Canzano’s blog on Substack for a couple of years, but I cancelled my subscription late last year. The demise of the PAC 12 really destroyed his business model. It no longer made sense to read his articles when the teams he was covering were split among four mutually exclusive conferences.

[Caleb]

Canzano proved to be a story feeder for Oregon State, who had an agenda to save the Pac-12 because they knew they were not getting off the sinking ship if everyone bailed. His stories were not dishonest because he was reporting what his sources were saying but they were entirely too rosy specifically because his sources were peddling blind hope on the survival of the conference.

[Author]

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