Utah Utes: Whittingham, Utes happy with No. 2 ranking

After coming up one spot short in their bid for the national championship, the country's only undefeated team could have been bitter.

The Utah Utes, however, have opted to look on the bright side of things. They capped the most successful season in school history (13-0) with the program's highest ranking ever, finishing No. 2 in the Associated Press Top 25 and No. 4 in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

Utah received 16 first-place votes in the AP rankings and one from the coaches, the latter cast — as promised — by head coach Kyle Whittingham.

Florida and former Ute coach Urban Meyer topped both of the major polls after defeating Oklahoma, 24-14, in the BCS National Championship Game Thursday night in Miami.

"National champions is really a relative term. It's an opinion. Until there's a playoff system that's all it's going to be," Whittingham said in a teleconference Friday morning. "So we're really not caught up in that at this point and time."

"It's all opinion," he added, "and there's really no true champion with the system that is in place."

As such, the Utes' aren't worrying about what might have been.

"We're looking at this season as a positive. There is a little bit of disappointment like we've talked about but we made huge inroads. Not only as a football program but as a conference," Whittingham said. "The Mountain West Conference, I believe, took a gigantic step forward this year — gaining the respectability of the nation and hopefully gaining an automatic bid from the BCS, as a conference, in the near future."

The positives, which include beating six bowl teams and four ranked opponents, simply outweigh the negatives for Utah.

"It was a terrific season. Our guys played exceptionally well for 13 straight games," Whittingham said. "And so we don't look at this season as a bitter pill to swallow. I think this a great, positive step for University of Utah football."

Quarterback Brian Johnson, who was named the Most Outstanding Player in Utah's 31-17 win over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, said the high rankings are an honor and will hopefully change the perception of the non-BCS issue in the national media.

"For us to finish the season at No. 2 after starting out unranked, I think, is a huge accomplishment," Johnson said. "Do I think we're worthy of the No. 1 ranking? I do, but at the same time I think they'll only let us go so far at this point.

"I think, ultimately, this is probably the highest we could have gotten," he continued. "So we're excited about it and we'll take it."

As for the coaches poll, Whittingham was the only voter to not to pick Florida No. 1. The coaches association had agreed to throw all of its top support to the winner of the BCS National Championship Game.

"I did indeed vote us No. 1 as I said I was going to do. And that's what I did," Whittingham said. "What ramifications will come of that, I don't know. I'm really not overly concerned. My main concern is our players, our football team. I did what I thought was right in respect to that."

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E-mail: dirk@desnews.com