‘Haven’t been our usual selves’: Can Utah’s identity, culture survive in NIL era?

To state the obvious, Utah has been off this season.
With a 4-4 record and a 1-4 mark in Big 12 Conference play, not much has gone right for the Utes as they gear up for the rivalry game against BYU this Saturday (8:15 p.m. MST, ESPN).
There are the obvious issues to point to, starting with quarterback play. That’s a big one — Utah has failed to score more than 27 points in four straight losses, and the inability to move the ball consistently through the air has been a sticking point pretty much all season.
Utah tried to get a transfer portal quarterback, but no difference-making signal-callers were willing to come to Salt Lake City and sit behind an established starter in Cam Rising. Sam Huard, who this season transferred to Utah from Cal Poly, was never close to becoming the Utes’ QB2, and will miss the rest of the season with an injury.
After Rising’s early-season injury, true freshman Isaac Wilson, who was supposed to sit behind Utah’s veteran quarterback and only play in mop-up time, was thrust into the starting spot. Dinged up himself, Wilson has had his share of struggles — throwing for 1,200 yards, eight touchdowns and eight interceptions on 55.4% accuracy — and was benched in favor of Brandon Rose in the third quarter of Utah’s loss to Houston.
Once again, Utah failed to develop, or land in the transfer portal, a suitable replacement for Rising, and it’s hurt the Utes this season.
Utah’s no stranger to middling quarterback play, however. In the last two decades, the Utes have never consistently had great quarterback play — Alex Smith, Brian Johnson, Tyler Huntley and Cam Rising were exceptions — but were able to find success, for the most part, by doing a few things really, really well — starting with physicality.
Especially in the Pac-12, Utah’s play in the trenches was a big reason for the team’s success. When teams played Utah, they usually still felt it during the next week. That reputation followed coach Kyle Whittingham into the Big 12, and “physicality” was one of the main words used by Big 12 coaches when describing Utah’s program.
To wit:
“… a program that I’ve always had a high level of respect for because of how physical they ran the football and how well they played on defense,” West Virginia coach Neal Brown said at Big 12 media days this summer.
“Got a physical brand of football. They play excellent defense. They don’t beat themselves,” Kansas coach Lance Leipold said.
If nothing else, you could usually count on Utah being physical, both on defense and up front on offense. But this year, that hasn’t manifested in the way it has in seasons past.
“I would agree that we’re not as physical this year as we typically have been,” Whittingham said. “And you really gauge that — at least we gauge it — by how you run the ball and how you defend the run, and we haven’t been as good at that this year.”
Utah’s identity, Whittingham said, has been running the ball successfully and stopping the other team’s run game consistently.
This season, the Utes rank No. 74 in rushing yards per game (150.9 yards, which takes into account sacks — Utah’s been sacked 17 times) and is No. 53 in rushing yards allowed per game (134 yards).
“Tough to pinpoint one exact reason for that. But yeah, we haven’t been our usual selves in that regard and that has been our identity as well,” Whittingham said.
“They go hand in hand and the ability to run the ball and play-action off of that, that’s been our formula for success for a lot of years and the ability on defense to turn teams one dimensional by taking away the run and forcing them to throw has not surfaced this year either, so that’s certainly been a big part of our issues this year.”
Due to a lack of a consistent passing game, Utah’s faced a lot of stacked boxes, which makes it tough to run, but even taking that into account, it’s been a decidedly un-Utah performance from the 2024 team.
The defense hasn’t been the main source of the issues this season — it still is allowing just 16.5 points per game and has put the offense into good positions consistently — but the lack of sacks (13 on the season), turnovers caused (10) and a less-dominant-than-usual run defense has been a departure from previous years.
Zooming out, Utah’s family culture, identity of being a tough, physical football team, and its reputation for sending players to the NFL has attracted recruits in the past and been key in the program’s success. Those players stayed at the university for three to four years, sometimes developing into NFL-level players, and were able to pass the culture onto the underclassmen.
In the NIL and transfer portal era, where promised paychecks are top of mind for recruits and transfer players while choosing schools and where half of your roster may be new each year, it makes it harder to have a defined culture and identity like Utah has enjoyed for two decades under Whittingham.
“Much harder,” Whittingham said. “And I think there’s a lot of teams across the country that are feeling and going through similar situations.”
“Four, five, six years ago before the advent of the portal, whenever that was, you might replace 25 guys out of 125 on your team. Now you’re replacing 45-plus. And the culture, I don’t know if diluted is the right word, but before you had 100 guys teaching 25 guys how we do our thing and now it’s almost a 50/50 split, the new guys as opposed to the guys that have been in the program.”
The job of a head coach has fundamentally shifted from even five years ago. Previously, developing players over three and four years was the big priority and how teams found success, but now, it’s all about how coaches can manage the roster, utilize the transfer portal and get a team with 50% new players every year to gel and perform well.
“It’s constantly in flux and I don’t want to say it’s like you’re hiring mercenaries every year, but it’s a situation where again, you got to collect as much talent as quickly as you can and then hope it gels and comes together and you get results,” Whittingham said.
“It is a different approach and different strategy than when you had guys just marinate in your program for four, five, six years and it is different. But again, not making excuses or complaining, because the entire country is going through the same thing. I just feel that maybe our culture and the way we did things gave us an edge back when that could be possible to have happened.”
The new age of college football isn’t showing any signs of slowing down soon. Starting next year, schools will be able to directly pay players, with a projected revenue sharing cap of $20.5 million, according to a memo obtained by Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, with around $13-15 million going to a school’s football team.
Along with revenue sharing, an effectively unlimited transfer portal has shaken the sport up, and the NCAA doesn’t seem to be able to get a handle on any of it.
For the foreseeable future, the current state of college sports will continue, and that will make establishing a culture and getting everyone on the roster to buy in that much more difficult.