I love it. Love down and dirty, slog it out in the trenches football. This is what Kyle Whittingham builds his team to do. Good running game, strong O-line and D-line, slow down the game, run the clock. It’s a chess game full of patience and frustration. Ute fans become confused because we have some athletes who are capable of breaking out, but this is a trap that Kyle wants to avoid. He knows that when it comes to athleticism, he’ll never overcome the USCs and UCLAs of the world, so he makes those teams play to our strengths. Kyle can recruit big, fast line talent, especially with the built-in pool of Polynesian talent he has to draw on. Thus, he focuses on how to make the line talent the focus of our offensive and defensive style. This frustrates our opponents, but also maddens our fans who constantly want us to go for the glory plays. That ain’t happening under Kyle’s watch. Sorry, but we’re always going to have games like OSU while Whittingham is coach. That’s just the way it is under his regime.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think his style of coaching is fun and full of intrigue. I’m on board with this approach going forward. It provides way more entertainment to me than the WAC past, where the scores would be 54-52. I would much prefer a score of 19-14 against a team with PAC-12 talent.