Gordon Monson: Utah’s football ascension has begun

The lights that awakened, beaming brightly into the night, onto the field and onto the Utes’ field of dreams, at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Thursday evening signaled the start of a season that is different than any other Utah football has ever experienced.

Actually, this particular occasion was more of an advent to that new frontier of a season, not the season itself. It was like popping open the flap on an advent calendar, counting down and cueing up something bigger yet to come. The good stuff. The telling stuff. The competitive stuff. The tough stuff. The unique stuff. A run through a novel conference, the Big 12, against a number of fresh opponents, some of them even top-drawer, all with bold Ute trophy-hoisting in mind.

This here, though, was something outside of that. This was as much a matter of Utah avoiding embarrassment as it was a useful warmup for substantial, substitutive battles in the weeks ahead. It was like riding a bike with — look, Mom — no hands, like the Utes playing dodgeball against Kinder in the garten, like falling out of bed.

On the flip side, worse than that for the other guys, poor Southern Utah, with embarrassment for the Utes nowhere in sight, I’d put a wrap on this sham of a contest this way: If you enjoyed what happened here, you’re the kind of disturbed person who’d love watching killer whales eat dolphins, baby seals being clubbed, possum families being run over by Peterbilts, and the humble suggestion here would be for you to seek serious professional help.

Kyle Whittingham needs no such help. After Cam Rising threw his fifth touchdown pass in less than two quarters, the coach inserted freshman quarterback Isaac Wilson into the slaughter, knowing full well that the game’s lid had been slammed down an hour earlier. In truth, it was slammed down the sorry day it was scheduled. It was little more than a payday for the smaller outfit, with the sacrificial dudes in pads and hats repeatedly getting hit by a hammer for their school’s financial benefit.

No disrespect intended for SUU, a football program with proud, hardworking, something-to-prove athletes existing a couple of levels down from the top floor, the upper reaches, of college football, full of gutty athletes who mostly are a step slow, a foot short and 50 biscuits light. The Utes, on the other hand, are thought to be, are supposed to be, a team loaded with a bunch of nasty hombres with lofty goals and angry intentions.

Since they looked every bit that part on Thursday night, what, then, could this inaugural game authenticate other than that those long-dormant stadium lights in fact switched on and worked properly, that footballs spiraled through the late-summer air with suitable rotation, that parking stalls were adequate — or inadequate, that the smell of burgers and hot dogs wafted off the concession grills and across the concourses with just the right pungency?

Well. That was about it, really.

Oh, and Utah might be scary good, but absolute proof of that will have to wait as steeper cliffs are climbed.

Whittingham was certainly wise enough not to say beforehand what everyone already knew: The Utes are far beyond the reach of the Thunderbirds at football. And the final digits that shined into the warm postgame darkness indicated the obvious — Utah 49, Southern Utah 0.

What Whittingham did say in the run-up was that he wanted his team to play “a clean football game; executing the way we should execute; limiting penalties; the whole mechanism of substitution; special teams functions. Everything in the whole operation needs to be clean.”

In the words of Paul McCartney, a man Whittingham, the rock historian, would appreciate, as it turned out, Utah was indeed a “clean machine.”

“It was a clean game,” Whittingham said.

Not sparkling, but down Penny Lane, clean enough.

When Whittingham said, “That’s what we’re really looking for. No delay of games, minimize false starts, just those sloppy penalties that can show up particularly early in the season.” He sounded an awful lot like a coach whose team was preparing for some kind of scrimmage, not a real game. Which is exactly what Utah was doing.

Afterward, he said: “We did what we were supposed to do.”

Sure, the Utes easily dodged the humiliation that SUU would have loved to have chucked at them, as they comfortably moved up and down the field and stymied the Thunderbirds’ fruitless attempts to do the same. Cam Rising did what Rising used to do before injury laid him flat — played with poise, efficiency and acumen, that last thing still not wholly evidencing the complete absence of running around with reckless abandon. He took more hits than coaches would have liked.

That recklessness, tempered or otherwise, will be an interesting study this season. With so much talk about the importance of Rising’s preservation, everyone will watch to see if the gifted quarterback will be gifted and disciplined enough to resist the devil’s whispers into his ears and mind to take off running, as he’s done in the past, and instead settle into the pocket and rocket the ball to his receivers here, there, everywhere. He seemed to listen to his coaches and to Beelzebub, too, throwing 15 times, running four times.

“It’s football, you gotta do stuff,” he said afterward.

Whittingham had stressed that point for weeks, that saving his star quarterback would be a top priority. Injury had been mostly avoided in preseason practices all around, and that trend was hoped to have been continued not just Thursday night, but every day and night.

“Little too much contact on Cam tonight,” was the way Whittingham put it. “… Sliding’s a good idea.”

It’s one thing in the first game of a season against a lesser foe to knock off the rust, to rev the engine and maybe polish up the pipes, it’s another to unnecessarily and foolishly risk blowing engine parts all over the turf. Utah managed to do that and not do that.

Rising threw for 254 yards and the aforementioned five TDs in less than the first half of playing time. He saw the field well, and put the ball where it should go at the right time to the right target for the right reasons. No big surprise.

Brant Kuithe, the other former Ute great seeking now renewed greatness after an extended layoff, looked the part of a tight end with promise still to come, catching four balls for 69 yards and three touchdowns. Another of Rising’s receivers, Dijon Stanley, went for 150 yards, 110 of those coming after the catch, and two long touchdowns. He added six carries for 34 yards. The Utes’ run game piled up 185 yards, with 10 different rushers sharing carries.

As previously mentioned, Whittingham’s desire to have his “throw game” more forceful was granted, as the combination of Rising and Wilson found nine different targets, good for 328 yards and six scores. The backup completed 7 of 11 passes for 74 yards, throwing a touchdown pass and getting picked twice. Ah, the life of a freshman QB playing in his first college game. “It’s a process,” Whittingham said.

The defense did what Utah defenses do — stopped the run first, busted up pass plays second, shut the door on the SUU attack third. It was left to the Thunderbirds to figure out some other way to move the ball. They could not. They could punt. All told, they got 150 total yards.

Scoring, if you must know, went like this: Rising hit Stanley for a 64-yard touchdown pass on the Utes’ first possession. Rising threw to Kuithe on a 29-year TD pass on the Utes’ second possession. Rising passed to Kuithe for an 18-yard score on the third possession. Rising connected with Stanley on a 79-yard flip on the fourth possession. And … if you thirst to hear about the rest, I’m begging you, seek a doctor’s help.

For most normal, well-adjusted folks, there’s better, more competitive stuff on the horizon for the Utes, stiffer challenges, bigger rewards, stuff that will both frighten them at times and mean more to them at others and bring more overall satisfaction for them, for anyone who cares to follow Utah football, and it will surely be a whole lot more riveting, more fun to watch.

What Kuithe said afterward might be ominous even for stronger Ute opponents that lie ahead, especially those coming into Rice-Eccles: “We definitely have room for improvement.”

Exactly how much room will define and determine their season’s ascension.