Kyle Whittingham, Utah's head football coach, tells McElroy & Cubelic the one player they HAD to have back this year & how they're preparing for life in the Big 12
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Welcome back in. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning. Excited to talk to Utah head football coach Kyle Whittingham, a guy that I know Greg and I both have a lot of respect for, followed his career. Coach, a little bit of a small signal that that career may be coming to an end with the announcement of a coach-in-waiting. I'm just interested, does that change your approach? Does it change any of the conversation, how you handle things going into a season?

No, it doesn't change anything at all. And in fact, that was made, it was done back in November. Somehow it just got released recently. But it's not all that uncommon for our situation. You've got a coach who's getting close to retirement and your program's been pretty successful and you've got an outstanding coordinator on your staff. So it's been done before. It's not...

you know, it's not completely out of the norm, but we are operating business as usual. And, and, you know, we just want to make sure that, that recruits primarily a recruiting move where, you know, the recruits know that when that transition time does come and we, and it's time for me to turn this program over to somebody else that they know the plant. And so I think that's important in that regard. And, and Morgan Scali is a fantastic choice. He's,

He's completely ready for this job. And like I said, when that time comes, it should be a smooth transition.

Your guess is as good as mine. What immediate changes

did you make to your philosophy as you now make this transition from the PAC? Not a lot. I mean, there's more similarities than differences between the Big 12 and the PAC-12, and so it wasn't... Wholesale changes were not in order. Now, we did change our recruiting footprint quite a bit with a lot of teams...

east of us now rather than the other way. We've taken a lot of the manpower and put it in Texas and Florida, Georgia, you know, those states east of us. And so that was probably the biggest change is just reallocating manpower in our recruiting footprint. But otherwise, you know, the offenses are – there's a lot of similarities. They may be a little more run heavy in the Big 12 than the pack was, but –

But there was really no need to completely revamp or retool anything other than make those tweaks in the recruiting. Coach Whittingham, do you think it makes it a little bit easier when the blueprint, sort of the foundation of your program is just physicality, winning the line of scrimmage, that, listen, no matter what league we go into, we're going to be able to lean on that and we're probably going to be okay?

I would agree with that. Physicality travels. No matter where you go, who you play, that's going to be something that is our calling card and something we hang our hat on. That is a big advantage for us most weeks is the line of scrimmage. When we made the transition to the Pac-12, we were pretty equipped to play at the line of scrimmage in that league. Now, we weren't equipped in the perimeter. We had a lot of

catching up to do recruiting-wise with team speed and athleticism on the outside, but that was a whole different ballgame going from Mountain West to Pac-12 where you're going from G5 to P5 at the time. We feel like we're much more equipped and more ready right away to compete at a high level in our new conference.

Having a quarterback that has kind of seen it all at this point, obviously it was unfortunate it was never really available last year. You guys had a bunch of warriors at the position, but a lot of inconsistency as well. So now that Cam's back and you have some stability at that position, what type of boost can we anticipate from your offense?

Oh, big boost. I mean, having him back is the single biggest factor in the program from last year to this year. He's the, you know, he's a captain, but he's the captain of the captains. He's the guy that everybody looks to. His presence out on the field is invaluable to us. I mean, his play is outstanding, but his leadership and the way he makes everyone around him better is really what sets him apart.

When you look at what he had to do in the offseason, I've read a couple of things that may be stronger than he's ever been. Is it adding some extra muscle? Is it movement in the pocket? Where's an area that maybe Cam Rising could be a little bit different than what we've seen in the past this upcoming season? Well, I just think you're going to see a bigger, stronger version of him. He's about 225 pounds, 6'2".

too, so he's a thick kid and he's got a great build as far as for durability, although he's had these injuries the last few years, but he's really worked hard in the weight room and he's a guy that is competitive. He's one of the most competitive people that has ever come through this program and like I said before, having him back has given us a huge boost.

What about some of the weapons? I mean, it's amazing just how the positions changed. You can't play quarterback by yourself. And while you guys have had amazing players on defense, great players along the line of scrimmage, maybe the one position group that you would like to see maybe take a big leap has been the wide receivers. And you now have added...

and really fortified that position with great depth. Tight ends have been great for a long time, but the receiver group collectively the last few years, now it feels like you guys can kind of go with everyone. So how have you made that position group a priority in order to kind of elevate some of the big plays you might be able to create?

Well, in a word, or I guess two words, transfer portal. I mean, we feel like we've really, as you mentioned, bolstered that position. Damian Alford came in, and he's a big athletic kid, 6'6", 220 pounds, and does a great job on the contested ball up the field. Dorian Singer was a 1,000-yard receiver at Arizona a couple years back. He went to USC, didn't quite have the production he did at Arizona, but

but he is doing some really good things on the field for us. Micah Pittman from Florida State, who was pretty banged up last year, is healthy now and ready to go. Money Parks, who's been with us since as a freshman, but he is really starting to come into his own. So we feel like we've helped ourselves quite a bit at that position. In fact, it's going to be a little bit of a transition year for us. Typically we have an RB1 that's pretty dominant, but right now the running back room, there's nobody who is really –

at the forefront. You know, we got a good depth in that room and, but it looks like it might be more by committee at the running back position this year than it has been in the past. And, and maybe air it out a little bit more with Cam and the throw game. Utah head coach, Kyle Whittingham, joining us on the buyer's right hotline, another group that could help assist in catching the football, the tight end group. I know you get Cam rising back, but also brand Keithy coming back.

You got a couple other transfers that potentially could help you out there. I know where we are. A lot of folks were excited about the possibility of what Landon King could do at Auburn. A lot of athleticism, but tight end group. Could that be something that really helps your quarterback out? Maybe even helps get that run game going as well.

It absolutely should be something that helps him out as a strong suit for us. And that is a, that room has got a bunch of talented players in it, starting with Brent Keithy, as you mentioned, it's great to have him back. He missed all of last season as well. And, and he's not really a prototypical tight end. He's six, two and a half and about two 30, but, but he presents definite matchup problems for the defense. We, we split them out a bunch of the time and, and get him isolated on backers and, and strong safeties. And,

So he's a tough matchup for the defensive coordinators. We've got a really intriguing kid, Caleb Lohner, that transferred in, a basketball player from Baylor, 6'7", 250 pounds, and he is ultra-athletic and got about a 38-inch vertical, and he is a very interesting kid. He's had an exceptional first two days of practice, and so we'll see where he figures in. You mentioned Landon King. Darren Bentley, a transfer from Snow Junior College a couple years back, is

is really doing some good things. Carson Ryan transferred from UCLA is in the mix too. So we've got a room loaded up with a lot of good players and we'll see how it sorts itself out.

Coach, last year was an anomaly in regards to injuries. I've never seen anything like it. Calling all in the bowl game, it's like, well, with the injuries and the opt-outs, we have seven guys available, and they're going to play both ways, and we're going to have to play seven on seven. It was unbelievable, man. I've never seen anything like it. I do think it told us a lot about your team and their resilience to still get to eight. It's insane. But also, at the same time,

Maybe you've kind of maybe looked and evaluated how y'all have done things in the offseason. Is there anything that y'all have tweaked in order to maybe mitigate some of those injuries in the future so you don't get as decimated as you were last year? Boy, we've looked at that from every possible angle, and the answer is yes. We have made some changes. We've looked at everything from the weight program, making sure we're not creating imbalances in the weight room, to how we warm up, to...

just the conditioning factor in two-a-days. We've revamped our two-a-days to more of an NFL model where we go two days on, one off, and three on, one off, four on, one off, kind of a ramping effect. And so we've spent a lot of time in the offseason looking at that, but traditionally we've been a team that's able to stay pretty healthy, and we really haven't changed. Last year we didn't change a bunch of stuff up that we say, hey, that was a mistake. It's just like...

it just snowballed on us. And so we didn't hit the panic button, but we certainly did our research. And anytime you can find a way to make things better in your program, you do it. And that's what we did this offseason, hopefully. Kyle Whittingham, Utah head coach with us on the Bars Rock Hotline. Coach, with all the realignment, everything that's taking place, everything happening, things going different directions, geographies change the landscape, etc.

And I know you don't want to get ahead of your opener against Southern Utah, but having BYU on the schedule and just knowing that college football is going to have that game, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to your program?

Well, first of all, it means a tremendous amount to the state of Utah. That game has been hit and miss for the last decade. I think we've only probably played six times in the last ten years, five times. I couldn't tell you exactly, but it hasn't been every year like it once was. But now that we're back in the same conference, it will be an annual event, and we'll continue to do so as long as we remain in the same conference with everything going on.

Going on in college football, who knows how long that is. But it's the single biggest sporting event in the state of Utah in any given year, with the exception if we have the Olympics, which, by the way, we just got the Winter Olympics. So in 34, I think it is, that'll be an exception year. But it generates a lot of interest. The media gets excited about it. Players get excited about it.

But it's not in the traditional spot. I thought that was a little bit weird. Typically that game when we were in the same league back in the Mountain West, it was the last game of the year. But this year it's early November, I believe it is. So it's not in the traditional rivalry week spot. But I think it will probably get to that as the schedules in the Big 12 start to get fine-tuned.

Is there anything that you can do from a staff standpoint to better prepare your players for the new league? I know you said that it's maybe a little more run emphasis, a little bit more line of scrimmage. But I know you guys have a great staff. You guys do a great job on a week-to-week prep. But how much time have you spent as a staff really studying the opponents and the tendencies that you're going to see this year compared to that of a normal year when you know kind of who you're going to get?

Yeah, we've spent more time in our preliminary scout reports is what we call them. But just on the teams that we play this year, we haven't done any legwork on any of the other teams. There's no need to if you're not playing them. And then we'll do our detailed deep dive on every team that game week, obviously, just like anybody else would do. But we've done a lot of research. We've researched everything from

you know, their personnel scheme wise travel, you know, we're going to be traveling about 35, 40% further this year than we would have in the PAC 12. And so there's, there's some things to look at. And then there's some, you know, anytime you travel two time zones, you look at going out a day early, you don't go down on a Thursday instead of a Friday and central Florida would fall into that category for us this year. We're,

It's a night game, so we decided to not go out two days early. But there's some things to consider, definitely, with the geography of it all and the logistics of it all. Well, Coach, we appreciate the time. Excited to watch your team this year. We love watching your teams every year because you guys are going to bring it specifically at the line of scrimmage. But we wish you the best, and hopefully we can catch up again soon. All right, guys. Thanks for having me on. You take care. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

There you go. Utah head football coach Kyle Whittingham joining us on the Buyer's Right Hotline for all your insurance needs. Look to Buyer's Right Insurance, a member of the WRM group where relationships matter. That'll roll us into our team of the day today. Will they make the college football playoff? Utah going to be that football team that we discussed today. And I feel like a couple of questions answered there by Coach Whittingham, G-Mac, just about what his team is going to be in a new conference this fall.

Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest questions, the health of Cam Rising. He's now 20 months out or thereabouts. I don't know exactly how long, not quite 20 months, but it's been a while since he had his operation. So that's encouraging. Maybe it's 16 months, 17 months, whatever it is. He's at 100%. Sounds like they're full go at the weapon position. I do think there's going to be a bit of an adjustment and a learning curve to going to the Big 12, but

with some of the things he referenced. But for the most part, man, they're well equipped to make a run at it. Certainly feels that way. And I'd be surprised if they're not in the mix.

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