New chapter for Whittingham

What a difference a couple of years can make. Two years ago when the University of Utah was casting about for a new football coach, administrators passed over defensive coordinator Kyle Whittingham.

Following two wildly successful seasons under Urban Meyer, Whittingham's stock rose considerably. With Brigham Young University's Gary Crowton's resignation and the University of Florida's hiring of Meyer, the two longtime rival institutions engaged in a bidding war for Whittingham's services as head football coach. In the end, the U. kept its man.

Whittingham agonized over the dueling offers, noting that he had lost 11 pounds and managed only 11 hours of sleep during the ordeal. He apologized that the matter had become such "a dog and pony show." Although he is a BYU alumnus, played for the Cougars and worked there as a graduate assistant, Whittingham said he couldn't leave the team he helped coach for 11 years ."What it came down to is I could not desert these kids," he said.

He agreed to a six-year, $675,000 contract, which makes him the highest paid coach in the Mountain West Conference and better compensated than Meyer, who was 21-2 at Utah, 11-0 this season with a BCS bowl invitation.

Whittingham's hiring gives continuity to a program that has experienced in one week's time the announced departures of Meyer and offensive coordinator Mike Sanford, who will be the UNLV Rebels' head football coach; an invitation to the Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day; and the announcements that quarterback Alex Smith is a Heisman Trophy finalist and Sporting News Player of the Year. For good measure, Meyer was also named the 2004 Home Depot National Coach of the Year.

Whittingham's hiring, though, marked a vast departure from the standard operating procedure for U. athletic director Chris Hill, who ordinarily seeks new coaches outside the program. But in this case, the best person for the job was someone who had devoted more than a decade of his life to the university and the football program in good times and bad.

Hill said he hired Whittingham because "he cares for his players in a special way. And he commands respect."

It sounds like the perfect fit for the U. Congratulations, Coach Whittingham.