The Disconnect

Excellent post.

He can hold practice in the basement of the pentagon next to the alien bodies and give press statements through dead drops in a cipher for all I care. The product on the field is all that matters. If we were good all of this is just noise.

However, it is real. And I believe it’s taking a toll on our team culture.

Any competitive advantage they’ve gotten from the secrecy has more than backfired on them. They proved that tonight.

I agree. When Whitt closed the spring scrimmages to the public I was p**sed. But for selfish reasons – I just enjoyed going to them.

But closing fall camp almost 100% to the media has consequences.

Since then, the team has been way over-hyped. No inside information. Just “we’re a top 5 team” with nobody left to give an alternative view of the team and more importantly nobody to hold accountable any deficiency in the team and nobody to question if the team just might not be nearly as good as advertised.

When someone might question the team’s real potential in the fall it can’t be evaluated because nobody knows! Nobody has really seen the team. Just believe the narrative- we’re going to run the conference.

So we get the over-hyped narrative. Obnoxious fans on X run their mouths with “we’re going to run over the XII” that ultimately embarrasses the rest of us.

I had more fun with a 4-2 team years ago that had to lunchpail themselves with far less talent to every win vs a 4-2 team that is underachieving with better talent.

And it began when the public and media were shut out and now nobody can ask the tough questions. Just dumb questions like “what needs to improve?” Or “how are the players feeling right now?”

Totally agree! Whitt has turned into the MSM version of FAKE NEWS, which means he’s hiding the truth about team’s status and won’t be transparent. I believe that has significantly hurt the team’s ability to perform on the field and has resulted in two straight loses. If he’s trying to prevent the opponent from gaining an advantage, that’s no longer a factor anymore because his mishandling of the QB status I believe affected his own player’s performance, therefore giving the opponent even a greater advantage then they already had.

I just think he wanted to hide the fact that Utah is not as good as the hype led on to believe and he didn’t want anyone to know that. If they lose more games which I now believe they will based of the last two games, there is no one else to blame but Coach Whittingham himself.

I agree but I don’t think it is careful or controlled at all.
Rising’s injury reports last season were far from controlled. I know many thought it was a carefully crafted narrative. It was far from that when you know how it went down live.

This season? Same thing. You have no idea how they are evaluating Rising’s injury in practice. If a player is able to play I would imagine you put him in scenarios that you are going to see on gameday and then evaluate that.

2023 and 2024 just seems like Rising sponging up empty reps from the team.
I blame Coach Whitt first and foremost because even Wilson buys into the poorly crafted narrative.

You can’t tell me that Rising was ready to play against Okie State and even Arizona. I guess Whitt can hide behind the early injury to Rising’s leg against ASU as the main cause of his inability to throw. That is bulls**t again. Whitt is gaslighting its fan base and lying.