I thought this was an interesting statistic

Zona and UCLA game was pretty one sided for their calls. Zona was Interfering on all of our receivers until it was finally called to end the half. UCLA was flagged twice. Just ridiculous. 

It is the PAC 12 refs. 

Surprised an Urban team is that heavily penalized.

Here’s a more disturbing stat:

Utah Football has never won a designated Ute Proud game :/

Of all things to worry about this week, ^^^ this is what has me most worried.

Whitt has said time and time again that he doesn’t want to be the least penalized team. Penalties have little correlation to success. 

When you are aggressive and force the issue, penalties will be called. BUT, if you mantain that aggression, the flags will die down. It’s the whole Jerry Sloan mantra, “If I grab and hold you every play, you won’t call it every play.”

Then penalties that DO kill you are the just dumb penalties. The illegal blocks to the back, the false start penalties, the offsides penalties, the personal foul penalties. 

I’m ok with the rest. 

Urban started this, I do believe. Urban wants (I say that loosely) to be one of the most penalized teams. Because that shows that you are out there grabbing, hitting, flying around and making plays happen. 

Urbans teams are almost always some of the most heavily penalized teams. When he was here it was the same way. Like Utah said its a fine line between aggressive play and penalties. Urbans would much rather have tight coverage every play and a possible penalty than loose coverage. Same with oline play, his teams get called for holding much more than other teams but in his mind the risk/benefit analysis is in favor of saying if you are beat at the line go ahead and hold rather than let the guy get past you. Either way the play would likely result in a loss might as well take the chance that the hold doesn’t get called.

Also I agree the pac12 refs seem to be very whimsical in their calling of games.

Agree with Whitt’s philosophy. Some penalties are a byproduct of aggression, and those are fine, but need to cut down on the “dumb” penalties.