One of college football’s longtime coaching stalwarts is moving on from his post.
On Friday, Kyle Whittingham announced he is stepping down after 21 years as Utah’s head coach. Whittingham was instrumental in building Utah into a perennial conference contender after taking over for Urban Meyer at the conclusion of the program’s undefeated 2004 season. Whittingham was the second-longest tenured head coach in college football behind Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz. It is expected that he will be succeeded by longtime defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley, the program’s coach-in-waiting.
Whittingham, 66, is not retiring, according to a source close to the coach, and may pursue other coaching opportunities.
“The time is right to step down from my position as the head football coach at the University of Utah,” Whittingham said in a statement. “It’s been an honor and a privilege to lead the program for the past 21 years and I’m very grateful for the relationships forged with all the players and assistant coaches that have worked so hard and proudly worn the drum and feather during our time here.”
Utah bounced back from its first losing season since 2013 this year by going 10-2 in its second year in the Big 12 Conference. The Utes were in contention for a Big 12 title game appearance in the final weekend of the regular season, but needed several other outcomes to go their way. Despite the 31-21 win at Kansas in the regular-season finale, Utah’s College Football Playoff hopes ended Friday night when Arizona beat Arizona State.
Whittingham said at Big 12 Media Day last summer he needed one last go at it to ensure he wasn’t stepping away on such a sour note.
“I couldn’t stomach going out with that season, as frustrating as it was, as discouraging as it was,” Whittingham said. “It didn’t sit well with anybody, but most of all me. And so I thought, ‘Hey, that’s not going to be the final act, I’ve got to come back and try and get the ship right and get back on track.’”
After being elevated to head coach starting in the 2005 season, Whittingham went 177-88, including three conference championships and another undefeated season in 2008. Utah went 13-0 that year and beat Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide 31-17 in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and finished as the only undefeated FBS team in college football that season.
Scalley, a former Utah safety under Whittingham, is expected to succeed him as head coach. Scalley was named head coach-in-waiting in a restructured contract in November 2023.
“I don’t think it’s any secret that I think he deserves to be next in line,” Whittingham told The Athletic in January 2023.
The 2025 season was Whittingham’s 32nd at Utah. Hired by former Utah head coach Ron McBride as defensive line coach in 1994 after a six-year stint at Idaho State, Whittingham quickly rose through the staff ranks. He was named defensive coordinator the next season, where he would remain under McBride and then Meyer. Since joining the program, Whittingham coached in 391 career games at Utah.
Before the latest conference realignment shake-up that saw Utah move to the Big 12 Conference in 2024, Whittingham’s Utes won back-to-back Pac-12 titles in 2021 and 2022, resulting in consecutive Rose Bowl appearances against Ohio State and Penn State.
Shaped in his own tenacious, defensive-minded image, the Utes evolved into one of the best defensive programs in college football under Whittingham. Utah’s defense became a regular leader in several major defensive statistical categories.
“Just personifies defensive toughness,” said the late Mike Leach of Whittingham.
While the undefeated 2004 season under Meyer kicked off Utah’s climb to joining the Pac-12 in 2010, it was Whittingham’s steadiness that kept the Utes in contention almost every season. In 21 years, Utah had only three losing seasons under Whittingham. The disappointing 5-7 campaign last year snapped a streak of 10 straight winning seasons. Utah’s leap from annual Mountain West Conference favorite to Pac-12 newbie was viewed by some as a significant one for a program that, prior to Meyer’s arrival in 2003, didn’t have a rich, sustained history of winning.
Under Whittingham, it did.
“He bleeds Utah,” Meyer said of his successor.
Never one to use the ever-changing landscape of the sport as an excuse, Whittingham was transparent throughout the taxing 2024 season about how the arrival of name, image and likeness (NIL) plus the transfer portal allowing more freedom for players to move has made it “much harder” on programs like Utah to maintain their steady identity.
“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 last fall.
“It is a different approach and (a) 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.”
After starting 4-0 in 2024, Utah suffered its longest losing streak since 1986, dropping seven straight before snapping that skid with a 28-14 win at UCF in its regular-season finale to finish 5-7.
Despite building one of the most-respected programs in the country during his tenure, Utah’s thoroughly disappointing 2024 campaign was, as Whittingham said several times throughout the season, his most difficult year of coaching. At one point last season, he said he was “in the twilight zone.”
Whittingham established himself as one of the best head coaches in the sport in red, but his football career started in enemy blue. A former BYU linebacker during the Cougars’ heyday in the 1980s, Whittingham played for his father, Fred, who was defensive coordinator during Kyle’s years there. He later brought on his dad as an assistant under him when he was promoted to defensive coordinator at Utah.
Throughout the years of sustained success, Whittingham’s name was rarely floated for higher-profile head coaching vacancies in other parts of the country. His spot was in Salt Lake.
“I think the brilliance of Kyle Whittingham is there’s too many guys that have a job and they’re looking out for their next one. Kyle’s never done that,” said former BYU offensive coordinator Norm Chow, who was Utah’s OC for the program’s first year in the Pac-12 in 2011. “That’s the magic of Kyle.”
He once vowed he wouldn’t coach beyond the age of 65, a proclamation he regretted because it became a topic of conversation with each passing season. Now, after facing variations of that question for the last several years, he will no longer have to entertain them.
One of college football’s most respected minds is moving on to something else.
