Gordon Monson: Goodbye, Pac-12. Hello, Big 12 supremacy?

“We love you Pac-12.”

That’s what the sign in the stands read.

It was more a goodbye note.

Love doesn’t last. Not in this case.

So, go ahead and slam the door on it, ladies and gentlemen. What’s done is done. What’s done is done in. What’s done is done for. And for the Utes, on Saturday afternoon at Rice-Eccles, it was won and done, in Utah’s final Pac-12 game, by the final count of 23-17.

As Utah took proper care of its closing Pac-12 business, beating Colorado, some in the stadium sang their misty-eyed requiem for the league that helped boost Utah football in a way that even Kyle Whittingham said added maximum elasticity to the stretch of his imagination.

Utah had been good for the Pac-12, as it turned out, but even more, the Pac-12 had been good for the Utes. Whittingham called that environment, its overall effect on his program, not just “beneficial,” but “instrumental.” And, indeed, it’s easy here at the end, if you want to look past the institutional-narcissism and money-grubbing aspects of conference affiliation, to get sentimental about a league, despite having some great teams in its final run, lurching while it was slipping under the waves.

But Mr. Schmaltz, Whittingham is not. In the postgame, he said in so many words that he had no time, no space, no inclination, nor any kind of mind for sentimentality.

“It’s sad,” he said. “It’s disappointing that the Pac-12 is now defunct.”

Big whup.

He reiterated what he had said before, which was, “Nothing you can do about it.”

And the coach added: “We’re excited to go into the new league and see what that’s about.”

There’s an unknown bowl game, still, for the Utes to play, and for two other teams, a Pac-12 championship game yet to play, but that second detail had nothing to do with the Utes, not this last time around. Given the adversity Utah had faced, a regular-season record of 8-4 didn’t seem all that bad.

“It wasn’t what we had in mind,” said Whittingham. “We had high aspirations …”

But all things considered, he’d take it.

“It’s better than 7-5,” said running back Jaylon Glover, who rushed for 107 yards against the Buffaloes.

With that, the Utes tipped their hat and said their adios, then, as they defeated Deion Sanders’ Buffs, fully aware that they will meet up with Colorado on somebody else’s stage in the seasons ahead.

The specifics of the Utes’ concluding game that fittingly enough for the dearly-departing conference never quite emerged as the Rocky Mountain rivalry for which the league had hoped mattered only to the extent that this was one last contest to conquer.

It was different than most of the recent Ute-Buff games since the schools joined the league in 2011, in that this match wasn’t as uneven as many of the others. It was, however, somewhat uneventful. Laid in juxtaposition against the overall effect the league had had on Utah, this last bit of punctuation was just shy of insipid. It was like watching football, drinking flat soda or stale beer, however you roll.

Not particularly compelling or satisfying.

Whittingham adored it because he can’t get enough of running the football, which his team did to the tune of 268 yards.

The presence of Sanders in the mix did make a difference, made Colorado more competitive, at least. But Utah led from start to finish, never really giving anyone the impression that it would lose the game, not without committing boneheaded errors. Backup quarterbacks on both sides — freshman Ryan Staub for CU and Luke Bottari for the Utes, guys who hadn’t played much or at all facing off — shaded the scene. While neither QB screwed things up for his offense, both limited their attacks.

For Utah, Bottari, a fellow most people on the outside had never heard of, was called upon because no other Utah quarterback could go. He showed great poise, converting numerous third and fourth downs, keeping key drives alive. More than anything, he cleanly handed the ball off to Glover, Ja’Quinden Jackson and Sione Vaki, who along with Bottari pounded away at Colorado’s defensive front. The Utes’ offensive line deserves much credit for creating ample space. “Thank you to the big guys,” Glover said. The small guys behind them ran often and ran hard.

The scoring went like this: Utes went up 10, Buffs scored, Utes got a field goal, Buffs got a field goal, Utes got a touchdown, Utes got a field goal, Buffs got a touchdown. Utes ran out the clock.

There weren’t a whole lot of scintillating plays, just steady football. And that was OK. Most of the humdrum that occurred in the in-between allowed more time for reflection, for rumination on this occasion for what had happened to Utah in the past and for what might happen in the future.

Profound remembrances, indeed, centered on looking back at what Utah had achieved in the Pac-12 and guesses about what it might do in the Big 12. Judging the Utes by their most recent season … yeah, everyone will do. The team, after all, as Whittingham referred to, failed in its defense of consecutive league titles. But if the Utes were worthy of any hardware this year, it wouldn’t be a silver trophy, it would be a gold-plated crutch.

Title this season, “Gone with the Bend.”

Ultimately, not even the toughness and resiliency of an outfit that’s built its reputation on both of those characteristics could help it completely climb over the loss of so many of its star players. That’s not an excuse for the Utes, just an explanation.

Every team has injuries, but few of them have as many significant breaks, tears, strains, bumps and bruises as the 2023 Utes had. That straight up was the biggest factor in Utah compiling an 8-4 regular-season mark. The four teams that beat the Utes were ranked.

“The Pac-12 was loaded this year,” said Whittingham.

But the story told in that league’s final breaths, as it pertains to the Utes, is more what they did over the past decade, not what they did without Cam Rising now.

Four trips to the league title game over the past six seasons, two of those championships having been won, leading to two appearances in the Rose Bowl, speak to the clear advancement of Utah football, the quality and number of athletes it now draws in, the consistent ascent of the coaching, the construction of a reputation that has been built not just in the West, but nationally.

If we’re motoring down Memory Lane, and apparently we are, the highest point of the Utes’ bounce from the Pac-12 came at that first Rose Bowl. Anybody who was there, and there were a whole lot of Utah fans on hand, knows what that was like, what that meant. Yeah, the Utes lost to Ohio State, but the vibe on and around college football’s most historic ground in those moments represented the progress, the growth of the Utah program. There were other peaks as well, but that was the pinnacle.

Turning toward the future, the Big 12 awaits. Such has been the positive flow at Utah that there have been and still are more than a few whispers among those at and around the university that Utah is too good for the Big 12, both academically and athletically. This, of course, is nonsense. But that kind of pomposity is a sign of what hobnobbing around with USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Stanford, et al., has done to and for Utah.

Because the Utes became champions among those schools, the comprehensive they now believe themselves to be superior to a combination of the Pac-12 schools coming aboard the Big 12 and those that Oklahoma and Texas are leaving behind. We’re talking scholarship, pedagogics and football here, not basketball, crop production, animal husbandry and dust storms.

Whether Utah really is superior is yet to be determined.

What has been determined since 2011, via its time in the Pac-12, is that Utah has become a formidable force in football, one that with a few bits of good fortune might even be as good as it thinks it is.

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