Football coaches are liars.
Coaches, in general, and Kyle Whittingham and Kalani Sitake and their lieutenants, in particular.
They are not filthy, no good, despicable, two-bit liars.
They aren’t liars in a manner that is mean-spirited or evil. They aren’t melting righteousness off your face with every spoken word. No commandments are being broken here. Their lies are not, as Grandma used to say, the handle that fits every sin.
No, no, no.
They lie, honestly.
They are more massagers of truth and managers of untruth.
Thin line there.
They are the type of liars, as penned by author Stephen King, who said it this way: “Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers [and coaches] lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”
How exactly does the dictionary define a liar?
“A person who tells lies; a falsifier, a deceiver.”
It should read: “Any coach who is asked in fall camp about who his next starting quarterback will be.”
Go ahead, ask Sitake or Whittingham or offensive coordinators Aaron Roderick and Andy Ludwig who their QB1 will be, and watch Pinocchio’s nose blow through the nearest window.
They’re not sure. It’s hard to tell. It’s a gosh-darn tight battle. It’s a spinning ball in the air. To catch it, they have to study more film.
Yeah, right.
They do not have to study more film.
They know exactly who their guy is. All of ’em do.
There may be an occasional shred of doubt, but that doesn’t count.
Whittingham and Ludwig are veteran football coaches who have watched Charlie Brewer and Cam Rising enough to be absolutely certain who’s more qualified to start. Same thing with Sitake and Roderick regarding Jaren Hall, Baylor Romney and Jacob Conover.
It’s not as though they don’t have enough information. They do. They’ve all got books of notes on each of their candidates, having studied daily reports on their strengths and weaknesses, their talents. They’ve read the formations and gone through their progressions. They can see who’s open.
But ask them about all of that now and they’re as baffled as baby chicks separated from their momma hen.
Ludwig said the other day that he’s befuddled by the process because “it’s a very competitive situation.”
Roderick was confronted after a recent BYU scrimmage and his response was classic.
“The quarterback picture is becoming more clear,” he said. “I’m not quite ready to say what it is yet. I need to watch film. … We’ve got a good group. I will say, Jaren and Baylor look like veteran QBs, they run our offense efficiently. And Conover has his moments when, I don’t like to compare anybody to anybody, but he’s almost like Zach [Wilson] when he was young. … The upside is really high, he’s an intriguing dude, a good player.”
The ever-affable Roderick chuckled throughout, in a bemused sort of way.
Like … you know that I know that you know that I know that you know that what I’m saying here is a bunch of bull.
Speaking of Wilson, it was just last year when A-Rod was asked the same question about the kid who months later was taken with the second overall pick in the NFL draft and a couple of other dudes, and he responded with this beauty: “We will determine later … who is one and who is two and who is three. Right now, we just don’t know.”
And shards of glass exploded everywhere.
If a coach as smart as Roderick has an NFL quarterback under wing, he is fully aware.
When Whittingham was recently asked who his quarterback will be, he answered thusly: “There is no timeline. … It’s so close right now, I can tell you that no decision will be made prior to next week’s scrimmage and then, hopefully, shortly thereafter. Don’t hold me to that because we’ll take as much time as we need.”
Same with Sitake, a man seemingly mystified, searching high and low, wide and far, hither and thither, hunting, scratching, grasping for the right conclusion.
“We have guys,” he said, “in Jaren and Baylor, who have played in games and started in games, so that’s different than what you normally would see when there’s no experience behind the [previous] QB. And then, Jacob is just different in the way he learns, he’s at an accelerated rate in the way he learns and performs, he’s extremely confident. So I can’t tell you if there’s much separation. But after watching it on film, we’ll be able to tell a little bit more.”
After watching it on film, indeed, he could tell a little bit more, but he wasn’t telling.
All he said was, “It’s really close right now.”
And: “They’re making it difficult on us.”
And: “I feel good about the whole room.”
And: “We’re trying to figure it out.”
And: “All three are showing great separation from the rest.”
And: “The sooner the better for all of us.”
Amen on that last one.
Again, they know.
The reasons for so much purported indecision vary from case to case.
The first is grounded in the fact that coaches hate to tip their hands. They love and, in some instances, demand certainty in the inner sanctum, but they loathe yielding the same privilege to outsiders, to their opponents. They prefer to keep as much as possible in house.
Second, they don’t want talented backups to transfer. Some egghead once figured the probabilities that a starting quarterback would stay completely healthy through an entire season are relatively low. They need at least two quality players in the fold and preferably three who can keep the offense afloat, if necessary. And quality QBs are a jumpy lot, they don’t like to sit.
Coaches delaying the decision makes it more inconvenient for a quarterback to up and transfer, once he gets the disappointing news.
Third, coaches really do like competition, or the appearance of competition. They want all players to feel as though they have an equal shot at running with the 1s. It sets and sends a proper tone and message throughout a program. Players earn their privilege. If they don’t believe that, they often sag, fearing what has already been scripted regardless of how much effort they put in.
Healthy competition really does steel whoever it is that ascends, building in him a sense of confidence that he deserved it. And it fires in everyone else the same feeling.
There are a couple of complications in all of that.
Sometimes coaches secretly invest in specific players, players they either recruited or favored from the beginning. Even in the high-pressure world of college football, where winning is the thing, biases like that rear up.
And more often than not, as workouts and practices go on, the team knows full well who the best quarterback is. Coaches can talk all they want about wide-open contests for a position, especially the most important one, but no matter how tight the race is, major college athletes recognize fine talent. Unless there is none.
But if they value their opportunity to get playing time themselves, they’ll never reveal it to reporters. Not without a coach’s permission. They’ll present themselves, then, as clueless as the guys up top.
Make no mistake, though, those guys do know. There might be an outlier here and there, a race that really is too close to call, a race that causes disagreement among the decision-makers.
But that is not the case at Utah and BYU.
Whittingham and Sitake know who their QB is. And that information is for their eyes only. Until it’s not.
Caught in the web of duty.
Wasting time.
One last thing: Just because they know doesn’t mean they’re right.
There are times when even trained eyes and minds see and think the wrong things. For the unlucky quarterbacks who are initially relegated to the sidelines, that is their best hope, another chance sometime in the future.
And there’s nothing better than proving a liar wrong.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 2-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
