What’s happening at Utah with its offense this season is unique and refreshingly unselfish. You know the old cliché at all levels of football: If you have two quarterbacks, you have none.

If I had five bucks for every time I’ve heard a coach — even really smart, experienced ones — say that a two-QB system does not work, I might be able to reduce the national debt.

Neither of those platitudes applies to the Utes this time around.

And that starts with two players and two words: Dampier and Ficklin, and ability and attitude.

Devon Dampier, a gifted quarterback who could start and succeed and dominate for a large majority of quality teams in college football, is more than just talented. He’s smart and he’s magnanimous. He’s willing to share the spotlight and spots on the field with Utah’s other capable quarterback, Byrd Ficklin.

One of the beauties of their situation is that they can — but don’t have to — split duties at the exact same position in the exact same way. They can — and sometimes do — play together, as in concurrently, enabling one another and the offense as a whole to flourish. That’s not a detriment. That doesn’t divide the team. That doesn’t cause half the outfit to throw its support behind Dampier and the other half to fall in favor of Ficklin.

It does the opposite.

The double dose of QBs causes this Utah attack to rally around both of them — on account of their unusual abilities to run and pass and — just as importantly — to lead.

It’s often claimed by players that they’re all about the team, not about themselves. They don’t care one iota about their own opportunities and their own productivity and their own stats. The only thing they dial in on is the W.

This, of course, is a lie. In many cases.

It does not seem to be a lie in this case.

Yeah, Dampier wants to thrive personally, but he doesn’t appear to mind doing that in tandem with Ficklin, all to the greater good of the Utes. Part of that is because he’s got the right mindset and part of it is because he’s not blind. He can see the skill that his brother Byrd possesses. It would be counterproductive for him to turn his back on and his mind away from what he knows is fact.

Ficklin can help Dampier thrive.

Ficklin can help Utah football thrive.

On that second one, not in the future, not next year, not after Dampier is done. No, right now. There’s no … ‘listen, bub, wait your proper turn on this deal.’ And no senior telling a sophomore to be patient, to watch and learn, and that his time will come.

Ficklin’s time has come. And Dampier does more than recognize that. He accepts it. He embraces it.

Wonderfully weird.

Ficklin is appreciative of Dampier’s willingness to make room. Either one of these guys could’ve cashed in and gone elsewhere. Neither did.

“Me and Dev, we always talk about each other, it’s always been good things,” Ficklin says. “People don’t see what me and Dev do behind the scenes, what we do at practice, what we do outside of practice. It’s kind of always, ‘Hey, do you know what’s gonna go on this week, is there any way we could switch this?’ I mean, it’s kind of ‘Byrd, you go to quarterback this time, I’ll go to running back.’ It’s kind of the proven way it seems on the field. Our relationship is a lot stronger than what it was last year. But we always try to help each other be in the best position. … It’s kind of, ‘you can be at slot and do this, I can be at quarterback.’ Or, ‘I can go outside and I’m gonna do this, you can stay at quarterback.’”

That’s not just rare, gloriously strange in modern college football; it’s invigorating and beneficial in a unifying sense. It’s also reminiscent of backyard football, back when friends used to gather up to play for fun.

It’s much bigger than just that with these big-time Utes, but cool, really cool, nonetheless.

Morgan Scalley and OC Kevin McGiven deserve credit for getting past standards that simply do not apply in this situation. Not only have they believed these two players, along with teammates and coaches, can make the Dampier-Ficklin partnership work, but they believe they’d all be idiots not to allow it and design it to work.

It is working — enough that the explosive two-headed Utah offense has caught the attention of opposing teams that will have to plan for and deal with it, as well as regular observers of the game.

The Utes have thrown the cliches into the blender. When they’re done with it, the new cliché might be: If you don’t have two quarterbacks, pity, you poor fools only have one.