Gordon Monson: Is Utah quarterback Cam Rising transitioning from sports hero to sports goat? And whose fault is that anyway?

It’s an unhappy circumstance when a sports hero, especially a college sports hero, becomes a sports goat, and not the all-time great kind.

Some angry Utah fans, and maybe smart-aleck fans of other teams, are pulling out the long knives, now calling Cam Rising … $cam Rising. They are upset or otherwise captivated on a couple of collective levels. The first, that the Ute quarterback, decked out in his baseball cap on the sideline, is hauling in, unencumbered by injury, $1.5 million in NIL money this year, and second, that Rising is hurt all the time, encumbered by injury enough that he’s unable — some accuse unwilling — to play.

That was tolerable, in a limited sort of way, until Utah lost at home on Saturday night to Arizona, a game in which the Ute offense played poorly, struggling to score, and capitulating in ignominy.

Moreover is the problem that Utah has a really good team, a promising team that many observers, present company included, and a whole lot of fans thought and maybe still think is capable of winning the Big 12 and/or qualifying for the College Football Playoff — if its frontline quarterback plays.

With freshman Isaac Wilson under center in the Arizona loss, Utah football did not look like a team capable of either of those achievements. It looked like an outfit that was confused by its circumstances, a team whose identity is shook and whose prospects are damaged. It looked the opposite of what was expected. What’s the saying? Where much is given, much is expected.

A few items of note here.

While the quarterback position isn’t the only one that underperformed in the defeat, blame still comes back to Rising because, much to his credit, he lifts the entire Ute team when he’s on the field, both the offense and the defense, giving both sides of the ball the kind of confidence necessary to persevere through and to win tough games. If the defense gives up a score, those defenders — and everyone else dressed out in red — know Rising can lead the attack back to equal and surpass whatever was just suffered.

So it is that Rising is now suffering more than pain in his throwing hand. He’s suffering pain from his own success in previous years, from the precedent he set, at what seems at present like a long, long time ago. He may have gone down as the second-best quarterback in Utah football history had he continued to replicate what he did in earlier seasons — having come back from injury to play exceptionally. Instead … well, subsequent injuries parked him on the bench all of last year and are now sidelining him again.

Should he be blamed for being human? No. There’s another, more legitimate criticism to fire off, but some fault-finders are pointing fingers at him for both the former and the latter.

Kyle Whittingham has done Rising no favors by shrouding in mystery the quarterback’s status, game by game, this time around, not unlike what he did a year ago. The games outside the game that the coach plays, not wanting to give presumed advantage in tipping his hand to opponents about who will play and who won’t before the opening kick, are landing squarely on Rising’s shoulders, on his knees, on his fingers. Opponents may or may not be uncertain and confused by the tactic, but the fans are the ones who are baffled the most. And thereby, impatient and eventually livid when the QB stands, as usual, on the sideline, in his cap, out of commission, out of position to help Utah be what it might otherwise be.

Which is to say, the charade backfires, doing more harm to Rising than if the fans, and everyone else, were made to understand the seriousness of the injury from jump as a means of giving the quarterback the proper space to heal that is required. If Whittingham really didn’t know, and doctors misdiagnosed the injury, then some blame can go to them.

All of that is made worse when Whittingham says Rising is oh-so-close to being ready to go. If he’s that close to being ready, then why doesn’t he go ahead and give it a shot, literally and figuratively?

This is how rumors, false ones, stir about the quarterback not wanting to play, only wanting to pick up his paycheck.

One last item regarding that NIL money. In many ways, college football is leaning more and more toward becoming professional football. You can argue over the advantages and disadvantages, the good and the bad, of that lean. But one of the consequences of that professionalism is this: In the past, college players, particularly high-profile ones, were seen, right or wrong, as student-athletes, kids who shouldn’t be too harshly criticized. The coaches were the pros, the targets at which the blame for mediocrity or substandard performance should be and was aimed.

When a quarterback, or any other player, is being paid a million or two million or three million dollars, that opens him up for sometimes unfair pro treatment, for pro glory and for pro critique. The manner in which Rising was hurt in the Baylor game, looking downfield as he shuffled toward the sideline with a defender barreling down on him instead of bolting directly for that sideline, the way coaches had pleaded in personal and team meetings with him a hundred times to do, all as a means of not just self-protection and self-preservation, but for the good of the team, can and should be called into question.

In the sour days of social media, the combination of those effects rolled together, even when it centers on something as human as injury, and is exacerbated by fans filled with and fueled by frustration, is what paves the pathway, the freeway, for a talented and gutsy and great player like Cam Rising to slip from hero to goat.

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