To the cool BYU fans on this site.
 

I apologize for the ranting that I'm doing on cougarboard. Frankly I cannot stand utefans.net right now and I'm bored and cannot force myself to do homework. So I have taken to using the work suck as many times as possible on cougarboard.

I'm seeing if I can finally get myself ignored enough to see how many people are ignoring me. Where is a new grapevine blog post when you need it.

So, what's your assessment of the Whittingham hire? Are you still glad to have him or do you think Utah may have to look elsehwere in the next couple of years?

I still think it is a little too early to make much of an assessment on the Whittingham hire. I think he has made mistakes this year. I think he may not have assembled the staff necessary to be successful. However, I realize the need to give him more than 7 games to really prove that this staff is good or not. Well with the exception of the offensive line coach you I want fired right now.

I think right now Utah has a lot of problems. We have been killed depth wise from the throw away recruitting class from '02 after the McBride coaching change. I'm not entirely sure that Utah has LBs on the team right now. The defensive line depth is just awful and the offensive line is not good. I think the problems on this team run deep enough that even a great coach would not be winning for us right now.

I thought Utah was poised to be good next year but you know I don't really think we are. I think there are problems that it will take a few years to fix. The true evaluation of Whittingham will not come into the '07 season.

Anyway here are my concerns. He seems too obsessed with what is statistically best. Too often you hear him say well we went conservative because it is the statistically best way to win. This is not baseball. Football is not a good stat sport and I think he needs to coach a little more with instinct, although he may not have that instinct. My other concern is his ability to hire his staff. Ludwig is not a good hire. He has not been awful here but I do not think he will be very good either.

Things that are positive. His recruitting seems to be solid. He seems to do a decent job handling the media. He has a good pedigree from which to learn (Meyer and Edwards) and I think he is learning from his mistakes as a coach.

Well MP, my take on Utah is that they are a team chock full of explosive players. Casteel, Hernandez, Ganther, and BJ are all 'big play' guys. They need to focus on being a wide open, 'big play' offense. No reason to go to the I formation at random times because 'conservative football wins games.' :roll: It does at times, but you have to play to your strengths. The Utes aren't doing that.
I feel bad for Kyle... great guy... and he's getting thrown under the bus right now. He will win plenty of games there. He knows how to get it done. The team is just very young and in search of an identity.

Re: To the cool BYU fans on this site.
 

If that's still your goal, we could all chip in and ignore you at a pace of, say, one person per hour one day until you reach that stage of acknowledgement. It's the least we can do to help out.

The problem with people jumping all over Whit is two things
 

First, everyone from fans to media, even the Utah coaching staff last year talked about how bad their second string was. Well now those are the guys playing. Whit will have to prove himself in recruiting over the next two or three years. I think he should be able to have Utah as a team that will be in contention for the MWC title almost every year.