Whittinghams: Like father like son

Last in a two-part series

When all the cheering stopped and the parades were finished and the Sugar Bowl victory was history and the polls were completed and the trophies handed out, there was only one thing missing for Kyle Whittingham, the University of Utah's football coach.

The old man.

Fred Whittingham, his father, coach and mentor, never got to see Kyle become a head coach. He missed the four bowl victories in four tries, including the historic win over Alabama in last month's Sugar Bowl. He missed the No. 2 national ranking and the unbeaten season.

He missed the national coach of the year honor. He missed the victory parade that sent his son and his team through the streets of Salt Lake City. Fred was there for all the formative years, but not the victory lap.

Kyle still keeps his father's old playbooks and notebooks in his office, although he does not refer to them nearly as much as he did early in his coaching career.

When he was agonizing over whether to accept a head coaching offer from BYU or Utah, he drove to Provo and visited his father's grave. He still chokes up when asked to discuss his father, which is why he chooses to say little on the subject.

"I've asked Kyle if he feels like his dad is there," says his mother, Nancy. "He says there are times during a game when he feels like he's right there next to him."

Kyle Whittingham literally tried to walk in his father's shoes. As a grade school kid, he coaxed his mother into letting him wear Fred's sneakers to school one day. They were size 13 — six sizes too big — but he wore them anyway. By lunchtime, he had had enough of the sloppy fit and walked home to change shoes.

He has spent the rest of his life — and you saw this coming, didn't you? — walking in his father's shoes.

You cannot discuss Kyle Whittingham without discussing Fred, his larger-than-life father. You must know the father to know the son. As Kyle says so frequently, everything he does as a coach comes from his father. When Whittingham was honored as the national coach of the year at a ceremony in Houston last month, he acknowledged the great coaches he had learned from — LaVell Edwards, Ron McBride and Urban Meyer — and then paid tribute to his father.