SALT LAKE CITY
Dear Mr. Football: Why will Utah’s Kyle Whittingham be the Pac-12 Coach of the Year?
A: Because he swept the Los Angeles schools (both of them were ranked). Do you know how difficult that is? Over 36 years, Arizona swept USC and UCLA just twice, 1999 and 2009.
The only way Whittingham won’t be the league’s COY is if Rich Rodriguez beats him today; then the award will almost surely go to the winner of the Territorial Cup next week, RichRod or Arizona State’s Todd Graham.
The most elusive award in Pac-12 football is Coach of the Year. Arizona has won it just once (Dick Tomey, 1992), and sometimes the voting is a farce. Tomey didn’t win it in 1998 when Arizona went 12-1. Larry Smith never won it at Arizona, 1980-86, when he took a WAC refugee and built it into a Top 25 program.
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Whittingham’s Utes are the toughest team in the league. Not the most talented, not even close. But in a dock fight, the Utes would prevail. That’s a lot like Smith’s UA teams of the ‘80s. They couldn’t match the talent at USC, UCLA and even Arizona State, so they became competitive through sheer force of will.
Dear Mr. Football: Who is Utah’s best player?
A: If I said it was punter Tom Hackett, you’d stop reading. So I’ll say Hackett is No. 1A, sharing the spot with edge-rusher Nate Orchard. They are also two of the most fascinating stories in Pac-12 football.
Hacket is from Australia. One of his Australian Rules Football coaches sent a video to Utah’s former special teams coach Jay Hill. Because Utah values special teams and field position like some Woody Hayes team of the ’70s, Hill asked Whittingham if he could fly to Australia and fully evaluate this unknown punter.
Amazingly, Whittingham agreed. Most coaches find their punter from a pool of after-school tryouts. Utah spent about $5,000. If Whittingham realizes a $45,000 contractual bonus for being Pac-12 Coach of the Year, he should share some of it with Hill, who is now the head coach at Weber State.
Hackett has dropped 18 punts dead inside the 10-yard line this season with a backspin you usually only see on a Phil Mickelson gap-wedge to the green.
Dear Mr. Football: How come none of the recruiting websites document the saga of Utah’s Nate Orchard?
A: At Salt Lake City’s Highland High School, Orchard was known as Nate Fakahafua. He is a physical freak, about 6 feet 4 inches, 240 pounds. Built like Mr. America. He was essentially homeless as a teenager, moving from Los Angeles to live with a teenage brother in Salt Lake City.
Ultimately, he became a father at 14, but then turned his life around, earned a 4.0 GPA as a high school senior and moved in with a youth basketball coach/mentor, a Mormon family who changed his way of life. Utah was the only team to recruit him.
How good is Orchard? He’s Scooby Wright with more size and speed.
Dear Mr. Football: Who’s the Pac-12’s leading defensive coordinator?
A: It’s difficult to separate the four most accomplished DCs. But USC’s Justin Wilcox, Oregon State’s Mark Banker, Arizona’s Jeff Casteel and Utah’s Kilani Sitake are as capable as it gets.
Sitake is a young gun, 39, with a head coaching future. Do you know where he got his start? At Eastern Arizona College, inThatcher, 2001. In the third game of his career as a full-time coach, Sitake played against the first-ever Pima College football team at Santa Rita High School.
Talk about glamorous. PCC coach Jeff Scurran stunned the established EAC program that night 25-7. A year later, Sitake went home, to BYU, his alma mater, and started over. The entire EAC staff split; head coach Scott Giles is now the women’s tennis coach at Fullerton College.
Dear Mr. Football: Why did Rich Rodriguez wear shorts and a golf shirt to his Monday press conference?
A: That’s his daily gear. Flip-flops optional. At Utah, the football coach wears a parka and mukluks. Earmuffs optional. In fact, when asked about the chance of a wintry mix and temperatures in the 30s today, Whittingham said, “I sure hope so, absolutely.”
The coldest game Arizona has played in its modern football history was Nov. 16, 1968, at old Ute Stadium. It snowed and then it continued to snow. According to Weather Underground, it was 36 degrees for a high in Salt Lake City that day. Only 16,544 attended. Arizona trailed 15-0 entering the fourth quarter but rallied to win 16-15 when the Utes, of all teams, twice fumbled because the ball was too slippery.
The most miserable weather day in Arizona’s Pac-12 years was Nov. 20 1982, at Oregon’s Autzen Stadium. It rained the entire game. Weather Underground lists the high temperature of 42. Arizona, which had scored a cumulative 82 points against Stanford and USC in the previous two games, lost 13-7 against a Ducks team that was 1-7-1 entering the game. Attendance was only 16,489.
The loss cost a 5-3-1 Arizona team a berth in the old Bluebonnet Bowl.
Dear Mr. Football: Who is Rice-Eccles?
A: Utah’s football stadium — Rice-Eccles Stadium — is named after the late Robert L. Rice, who made a fortune on the old European Health Spas chain 40 years ago. The late Spencer Eccles was a banker, an All-American on Utah’s ski team in the 1950s; his family is the Rockefellers of Utah.
True story: When I was an intern at Salt Lake’s afternoon newspaper, the Deseret News, I wrote about Rice’s $1 million donation to the Utes in the mid-’70s. I endearingly referred to him as an “exercise nut.” He was Mr. Utah in 1954, after all.
Upon arrival at work the next day, the managing editor summoned me to his office. It was trouble. He was a regular handball partner of Robert L. Rice.
“Mr. Rice does not enjoy being called a nut,” I was told. The only time I was scolded with more seriousness was when I wrote a headline that said “Close But No Cigar.” In those days, the LDS Church, which owns the Deseret News, was very unhappy with any term related to tobacco in its newspaper.
Today’s game figures to be a close-but-no-cigar outcome for Arizona.
Unless something freaky happens, Arizona isn’t likely to score more than 10 or 14 points, maybe fewer. It will mostly spin on quarterback Anu Solomon’s ability to become a viable and elusive runner. He’ll need to operate the zone-read so effectively that Utah’s “spy,” the one defensive player assigned to follow Solomon, builds a big total of MA’s.
MA’s? That’s RichRod’s term for missed assignments.
It won’t be pretty. Utah 16, Arizona 10.
