Utah enters Wednesday’s game on the second half of a back-to-back. The Mammoth are 16-16-3 this season and 4-6-0 in their last 10 games. Currently Utah is fourth in the Central Division with 35 points …
Utah enters Wednesday’s game on the second half of a back-to-back. The Mammoth are 16-16-3 this season and 4-6-0 in their last 10 games. Currently Utah is fourth in the Central Division with 35 points …
The Utah Jazz have to keep their pick this season. It’s a non-negotiable. Ending this season without a top-8 pick with a 10-15 roster that, even with some impressive wins, is not a credible contender …
The Utah Jazz have to keep their pick this season. It’s a non-negotiable. Ending this season without a top-8 pick with a 10-15 roster that, even with some impressive wins, is not a credible contender for the championship.
That said, they have a chance to get there if they keep this pick and keep this roster together. But it’s going to take the Jazz taking control of their team’s future. And that likely means some drastic moves that ensure the team doesn’t win games they likely would have had they just played to win.
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And that will be the most applauded move by the entire fan base.
Last night’s game showed us that the Jazz understand the importance of the pick. Not playing Svi Mykhailiuk, Kevin Love, and Jusuf Nurkic. The difference between what the Mavericks did last night and the Jazz? They rested their second most important player. For Utah to get to where they need to go, they have to do the same thing.
Yes, it’s unsavory. Yes, the system sucks, and we all wish it weren’t this way. But in basketball as in life, you can only control what you can control. For the Jazz, they can control who they play and how long they play. And the rewards will be massive. Utah has a core of young players who are developing into something special. The Jazz need one more top pick in the lottery to build around, and they can credibly argue they are building towards something. Just like the Dallas Mavericks did with Anthony Davis not playing against the Jazz, Utah needs to rest their second-best player, Lauri Markkanen, when they play against below .500 teams for the rest of the season.
This will allow Keyonte George to continue playing and enable Ace Bailey to receive prime development at the small forward spot. There is no downside to this plan, and it will assure the Jazz keep their top-8 pick this year, a pick that has the potential to change the franchise forever.
Omar Yaghi thinks crystals with gaps that capture moisture could bring technology from “Dune” to the arid parts of Earth.
Omar Yaghi was a quiet child, diligent, unlikely to roughhouse with his nine siblings. So when he was old enough, his parents tasked him with one of the family’s most vital chores: fetching water. Like most homes in his Palestinian neighborhood in Amman, Jordan, the Yaghis’ had no electricity or running water. At least once every two weeks, the city switched on local taps for a few hours so residents could fill their tanks. Young Omar helped top up the family supply. Decades later, he says he can’t remember once showing up late. The fear of leaving his parents, seven brothers, and two sisters parched kept him punctual.
Yaghi proved so dependable that his father put him in charge of monitoring how much the cattle destined for the family butcher shop ate and drank. The best-quality cuts came from well-fed, hydrated animals—a challenge given that they were raised in arid desert.
Specially designed materials called metal-organic frameworks can pull water from the air like a sponge—and then give it back.
But at 10 years old, Yaghi learned of a different occupation. Hoping to avoid a rambunctious crowd at recess, he found the library doors in his school unbolted and sneaked in. Thumbing through a chemistry textbook, he saw an image he didn’t understand: little balls connected by sticks in fascinating shapes. Molecules. The building blocks of everything.
“I didn’t know what they were, but it captivated my attention,” Yaghi says. “I kept trying to figure out what they might be.”
That’s how he discovered chemistry—or maybe how chemistry discovered him. After coming to the United States and, eventually, a postdoctoral program at Harvard University, Yaghi devoted his career to finding ways to make entirely new and fascinating shapes for those little sticks and balls. In October 2025, he was one of three scientists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for identifying metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs—metal ions tethered to organic molecules that form repeating structural landscapes. Today that work is the basis for a new project that sounds like science fiction, or a miracle: conjuring water out of thin air.
When he first started working with MOFs, Yaghi thought they might be able to absorb climate-damaging carbon dioxide—or maybe hold hydrogen molecules, solving the thorny problem of storing that climate-friendly but hard-to-contain fuel. But then, in 2014, Yaghi’s team of researchers at UC Berkeley had an epiphany. The tiny pores in MOFs could be designed so the material would pull water molecules from the air around them, like a sponge—and then, with just a little heat, give back that water as if squeezed dry. Just one gram of a water-absorbing MOF has an internal surface area of roughly 7,000 square meters.
Yaghi wasn’t the first to try to pull potable water from the atmosphere. But his method could do it at lower levels of humidity than rivals—potentially shaking up a tiny, nascent industry that could be critical to humanity in the thirsty decades to come. Now the company he founded, called Atoco, is racing to demonstrate a pair of machines that Yaghi believes could produce clean, fresh, drinkable water virtually anywhere on Earth, without even hooking up to an energy supply.
That’s the goal Yaghi has been working toward for more than a decade now, with the rigid determination that he learned while doing chores in his father’s butcher shop.
“It was in that shop where I learned how to perfect things, how to have a work ethic,” he says. “I learned that a job is not done until it is well done. Don’t start a job unless you can finish it.”
Most of Earth is covered in water, but just 3% of it is fresh, with no salt—the kind of water all terrestrial living things need. Today, desalination plants that take the salt out of seawater provide the bulk of potable water in technologically advanced desert nations like Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but at a high cost. Desalination facilities either heat water to distill out the drinkable stuff or filter it with membranes the salt doesn’t pass through; both methods require a lot of energy and leave behind concentrated brine. Typically desal pumps send that brine back into the ocean, with devastating ecological effects.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, uses a model to explain how metalorganic frameworks (MOFs) can trap smaller molecules inside. In October 2025, Yaghi and two other scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for identifying MOFs.
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/GETTY IMAGES
I was talking to Atoco executives about carbon dioxide capture earlier this year when they mentioned the possibility of harvesting water from the atmosphere. Of course my mind immediately jumped to Star Wars, and Luke Skywalker working on his family’s moisture farm, using “vaporators” to pull water from the atmosphere of the arid planet Tatooine. (Other sci-fi fans’ minds might go to Dune, and the water-gathering technology of the Fremen.) Could this possibly be real?
It turns out people have been doing it for millennia. Archaeological evidence of water harvesting from fog dates back as far as 5000 BCE. The ancient Greeks harvested dew, and 500 years ago so did the Inca, using mesh nets and buckets under trees.
Today, harvesting water from the air is a business already worth billions of dollars, say industry analysts—and it’s on track to be worth billions more in the next five years. In part that’s because typical sources of fresh water are in crisis. Less snowfall in mountains during hotter winters means less meltwater in the spring, which means less water downstream. Droughts regularly break records. Rising seas seep into underground aquifers, already drained by farming and sprawling cities. Aging septic tanks leach bacteria into water, and cancer-causing “forever chemicals” are creating what the US Government Accountability Office last year said “may be the biggest water problem since lead.” That doesn’t even get to the emerging catastrophe from microplastics.
So lots of places are turning to atmospheric water harvesting. Watergen, an Israel-based company working on the tech, initially planned on deploying in the arid, poorer parts of the world. Instead, buyers in Europe and the United States have approached the company as a way to ensure a clean supply of water. And one of Watergen’s biggest markets is the wealthy United Arab Emirates. “When you say ‘water crisis,’ it’s not just the lack of water—it’s access to good-quality water,” says Anna Chernyavsky, Watergen’s vice president of marketing.
In other words, the technology “has evolved from lab prototypes to robust, field-deployable systems,” says Guihua Yu, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. “There is still room to improve productivity and energy efficiency in the whole-system level, but so much progress has been steady and encouraging.”
MOFs are just the latest approach to the idea. The first generation of commercial tech depended on compressors and refrigerant chemicals—large-scale versions of the machine that keeps food cold and fresh in your kitchen. Both use electricity and a clot of pipes and exchangers to make cold by phase-shifting a chemical from gas to liquid and back; refrigerators try to limit condensation, and water generators basically try to enhance it.
That’s how Watergen’s tech works: using a compressor and a heat exchanger to wring water from air at humidity levels as low as 20%—Death Valley in the spring. “We’re talking about deserts,” Chernyavsky says. “Below 20%, you get nosebleeds.”
A Watergen unit provides drinking water to students and staff at St. Joseph’s, a girls’ school in Freetown, Sierra Leone. “When you say ‘water crisis,’ it’s not just the lack of water— it’s access to good-quality water,” says Anna Chernyavsky, Watergen’s vice president of marketing.
COURTESY OF WATERGEN
That still might not be good enough. “Refrigeration works pretty well when you are above a certain relative humidity,” says Sameer Rao, a mechanical engineer at the University of Utah who researches atmospheric water harvesting. “As the environment dries out, you go to lower relative humidities, and it becomes harder and harder. In some cases, it’s impossible for refrigeration-based systems to really work.”
So a second wave of technology has found a market. Companies like Source Global use desiccants—substances that absorb moisture from the air, like the silica packets found in vitamin bottles—to pull in moisture and then release it when heated. In theory, the benefit of desiccant-based tech is that it could absorb water at lower humidity levels, and it uses less energy on the front end since it isn’t running a condenser system. Source Global claims its off-grid, solar-powered system is deployed in dozens of countries.
But both technologies still require a lot of energy, either to run the heat exchangers or to generate sufficient heat to release water from the desiccants. MOFs, Yaghi hopes, do not. Now Atoco is trying to prove it. Instead of using heat exchangers to bring the air temperature to dew point or desiccants to attract water from the atmosphere, a system can rely on specially designed MOFs to attract water molecules. Atoco’s prototype version uses an MOF that looks like baby powder, stuck to a surface like glass. The pores in the MOF naturally draw in water molecules but remain open, making it theoretically easy to discharge the water with no more heat than what comes from direct sunlight. Atoco’s industrial-scale design uses electricity to speed up the process, but the company is working on a second design that can operate completely off grid, without any energy input.
Yaghi’s Atoco isn’t the only contender seeking to use MOFs for water harvesting. A competitor, AirJoule, has introduced MOF-based atmospheric water generators in Texas and the UAE and is working with researchers at Arizona State University, planning to deploy more units in the coming months. The company started out trying to build more efficient air-conditioning for electric buses operating on hot, humid city streets. But then founder Matt Jore heard about US government efforts to harvest water from air—and pivoted. The startup’s stock price has been a bit of a roller-coaster, but Jore says the sheer size of the market should keep him in business. Take Maricopa County, encompassing Phoenix and its environs—it uses 1.2 billion gallons of water from its shrinking aquifer every day, and another 874 million gallons from surface sources like rivers.
“So, a couple of billion gallons a day, right?” Jore tells me. “You know how much influx is in the atmosphere every day? Twenty-five billion gallons.”
My eyebrows go up. “Globally?”
“Just the greater Phoenix area gets influx of about 25 billion gallons of water in the air,” he says. “If you can tap into it, that’s your source. And it’s not going away. It’s all around the world. We view the atmosphere as the world’s free pipeline.”
Besides AirJoule’s head start on Atoco, the companies also differ on where they get their MOFs. AirJoule’s system relies on an off-the-shelf version the company buys from the chemical giant BASF; Atoco aims to use Yaghi’s skill with designing the novel material to create bespoke MOFs for different applications and locations.
“Given the fact that we have the inventor of the whole class of materials, and we leverage the stuff that comes out of his lab at Berkeley—everything else equal, we have a good starting point to engineer maybe the best materials in the world,” says Magnus Bach, Atoco’s VP of business development.
Yaghi envisions a two-pronged product line. Industrial-scale water generators that run on electricity would be capable of producing thousands of liters per day on one end, while units that run on passive systems could operate in remote locations without power, just harnessing energy from the sun and ambient temperatures. In theory, these units could someday replace desalination and even entire municipal water supplies. The next round of field tests is scheduled for early 2026, in the Mojave Desert—one of the hottest, driest places on Earth.
“That’s my dream,” Yaghi says. “To give people water independence, so they’re not reliant on another party for their lives.”
Both Yaghi and Watergen’s Chernyavsky say they’re looking at more decentralized versions that could operate outside municipal utility systems. Home appliances, similar to rooftop solar panels and batteries, could allow households to generate their own water off grid.
That could be tricky, though, without economies of scale to bring down prices. “You have to produce, you have to cool, you have to filter—all in one place,” Chernyavsky says. “So to make it small is very, very challenging.”
Difficult as that may be, Yaghi’s childhood gave him a particular appreciation for the freedom to go off grid, to liberate the basic necessity of water from the whims of systems that dictate when and how people can access it.
“That’s really my dream,” he says. “To give people independence, water independence, so that they’re not reliant on another party for their livelihood or lives.”
Toward the end of one of our conversations, I asked Yaghi what he would tell the younger version of himself if he could. “Jordan is one of the worst countries in terms of the impact of water stress,” he said. “I would say, ‘Continue to be diligent and observant. It doesn’t really matter what you’re pursuing, as long as you’re passionate.’”
I pressed him for something more specific: “What do you think he’d say when you described this technology to him?”
Yaghi smiled: “I think young Omar would think you’re putting him on, that this is all fictitious and you’re trying to take something from him.” This reality, in other words, would be beyond young Omar’s wildest dreams.
Alexander C. Kaufman is a reporter who has covered energy, climate change, pollution, business, and geopolitics for more than a decade.
Coming off a 5–4 overtime win against the Penguins, the Mammoth traveled to Boston hoping to defeat the Bruins without needing to rally from a three-goal deficit. While a first-period goal put Utah up …
Miracle comebacks, it seems, can only happen in Pittsburgh.
Coming off a 5–4 overtime win against the Penguins, the Mammoth traveled to Boston hoping to defeat the Bruins without needing to rally from a three-goal deficit.
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While a first-period goal put Utah up 1–0 — an encouraging start compared to its game against Pittsburgh — Boston slowly gained control of the game en route to a 4–1 win.
The game started off well for the Mammoth, with plenty of early shots on goal and extended time in the offensive zone. It looked as though the momentum from their win against the Penguins had carried over into the opening of the game.
Once Utah earned its first power play, Barrett Hayton and the second power-play unit made quick work of it, scoring to give Utah a 1–0 lead.
Just as it had done against Pittsburgh, Utah’s second power play unit now has scored it back-to-back games. The only difference this time is that Hayton got the goal rather than Michael Carcone, scoring at the net front after he collected a pass from Sean Durzi.
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Utah certainly started the game well. Not only did the Mammoth get its first lead of the game in the first rather than the third, but it also got it first goal on only its fifth shot on net of the game.
But as the game progressed, Boston slowly gained more and more control as the game went on. It suddenly became evident that Utah would have to be prepared to play with a lead because the Bruins weren’t going to go away quietly.
However, the lead Utah had didn’t last long as a Boston would also capitalize on a power play of its own, after an excellent display of passing led to a wide open look on net for Morgan Geekie.
Any advantage Utah had over Boston quickly disappeared as it lost the momentum soon after Geekie’s goal.
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Though the Mammoth would finish the first tied 1-1, the Bruins were looking like it was starting to figure out how to play its style of hockey.
Once play had resumed, it didn’t take long for Geekie to score another goal for the Bruins.
Just like his first goal, Geekie benefited from a perfect pass from David Pastrnak that no one from Utah anticipated. Once the puck got through, Geekie was left alone with Vitek Vanecek and made the most of the opportunity.
After that, Utah never seemed able to regain control of the game, managing just eight combined shots on goal across the second and third periods. Even with those chances, Boston goalie Jeremy Swayman stood firm and did not allow the Mammoth to score again.
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While some defensive breakdowns made it nearly impossible for Vanecek to make a save — particularly when Pavel Zacha banked a pass off the end boards to set up a Casey Mittelstadt goal — Utah cannot ignore Vanecek’s 2-7-1 record on the season.
But Utah’s defense certainly needs to help Vanecek out and find ways to make him less vulnerable.
Now Utah will have to get ready fast as it plays the Detroit Red Wings in less than 24 hours on the second game of its back-to-back.
The three game win streak may be off the table, but Utah still should look to avoid falling into a losing streak.
Since Oct. 26, every time the Mammoth have lost a game, they have also lost the following game. Even worse, the team has endured two three-game losing streaks and two four-game losing streaks.
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Simply put, Utah has not found a way to bounce back immediately after losses. It is certainly more difficult to respond on a short turnaround. However, the Red Wings are in the same position, playing the second game of a back-to-back after securing a 3–2 win against the New York Islanders.
But with a chance to come away from the road trip with a 2–1 record, and a national TV spotlight on TNT and HBO Max, Utah should look to play hard and physical.
Lomu has been with the Utes since 2023, spending three seasons with the program. He grew into one of their best linemen overnight, shining as one of the top players at his position in the country.
This has garnered him acclaim at the Big 12 level, receiving first team honors in 2025. With how he excelled in one of the top leagues in college football, NFL teams would embrace the concept of considering him as a future talent.
With his stock at its highest, Lomu has made the decision to declare for the 2026 NFL Draft. Football analyst Jordan Reid reacted to the news, having high remarks to share about the standout lineman.
“Lomu is my top ranked OT and No. 15 overall player on my latest big board. He needs to gain strength, but his upside as a natural left tackle gives him the potential to be the first player off the board at the position,” Reid wrote.
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What’s next for Utah after Caleb Lomu’s decision
Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images
It is big news for Caleb Lomu to make about his football career, celebrating his time at Utah while moving on to his NFL aspirations.
Utah remarkably performed well as one of the best teams in the nation, especially in the Big 12. The Utes finished with a 10-2 overall record, going 7-2 in their conference matchups. They finished at third place in the league standings, being above the Houston Cougars and Arizona Wildcats while being under the BYU Cougars and Texas Tech Red Raiders.
Utah excelled on both sides of the ball in the regular season. They averaged 41.1 points per game on offense and conceded 18.7 points per game on defense.
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Devon Dampier led the attack with 193 completions for 2,180 yards and 22 touchdowns while adding 127 rushes for 687 net yards and seven scores on the ground. Wayshawn Parker starred in the run game with 133 carries for 931 net yards and six touchdowns while Byrd Fioklin and Naquari Rogers provided 10 touchdowns each.
The No. 15 Utes will look forward to ending the 2025 campaign with their bowl game. They will take part in the Las Vegas Bowl, facing the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Dec. 31 at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Utah enters the first half of a back-to-back with two-straight wins, including a victory on the first stop of the road trip. The Mammoth are 16-15-3 and 4-6-0 in their last 10 games.
Utah enters the first half of a back-to-back with two-straight wins, including a victory on the first stop of the road trip. The Mammoth are 16-15-3 and 4-6-0 in their last 10 games.
The Utah man arrested by ICE and wrongly accused by Homeland Security of being a “sodomite and a child abuser,” was granted bond on Monday.
The Utah man arrested by ICE and wrongly accused by Homeland Security of being a “sodomite and a child abuser,” was granted bond on Monday.
A hearing for Jair Celis was held virtually on Monday, with an additional hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Celis has been a popular soccer coach in Sandy, is married to a U.S. citizen, and has a baby boy who is also a U.S. citizen.
“The judge was very good,” said Adam Crayk, Celis’ attorney. “She just flat out said, ‘Look, I can’t consider something that’s a verbal representation. There’s been no filing here. There’s been nothing submitted to show anything other than exactly what his attorney is saying. And that is, look at all the years that he’s been here, look at all the people that are in favor of him.’”
Former Blue Devil Kyle Filipowski had a great game for the Jazz as well, hitting for 25 on 9-13 from the floor. He also had 9 rebounds. Flagg was the show Monday night, though, becoming the first …
Cooper Flagg, as most Duke fans probably know, got off to a bit of a slow start as an NBA rookie. The Mavericks started him off at point guard and while he did okay there, it was asking a lot of an 18-year-0ld rookie and people started to say he was overrated.
Flagg finished the night with 42 points on 13-27/1-4 shooting and 15-20 on his free throws. He also had 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 blocks.
Former Blue Devil Kyle Filipowski had a great game for the Jazz as well, hitting for 25 on 9-13 from the floor. He also had 9 rebounds.
Flagg was the show Monday night, though, becoming the first 18-year-old in league history to top 40. Over the last seven games, Flagg is averaging 25.7 points.
We’re not saying Dallas fans aren’t still upset about the Luka Doncic trade, but Flagg is giving them a lot of hope for the future.
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So now Whittingham is stepping down as coach of the Utes at the age of 66, two years older than his father was at his death. Urban Meyer delivered two brilliant, lightning-strike years at Utah on his …
When Kyle Whittingham announced his retirement last week as head coach of the Utah football team, it marked one of the few times that he put himself in the spotlight; that’s not his style.
It couldn’t be helped, of course.
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The man has managed to coach for 30 years at the University of Utah, 21 as head coach, and he did it about as quietly as he could. The story was never about him, if he could help it.
I remember sitting in his office one morning many years ago as we began an interview for a in-depth, two-part story about his life and career. I could sense his reluctance, his discomfort. I commented on this, and he said, “You know how some people say they don’t like to be in the spotlight, but they really do? I really don’t.”
He never wanted the attention. He coached on the down-low, almost anonymously, at least as much as that was possible for a coach who guided his team to three conference championships, two Rose Bowl appearances, 18 winning seasons, one unbeaten season, a win over mighty Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, and 10 top-20 finishes in the national polls (including No. 2 and No. 4), all of which would result in two national coach of the year awards.
Controversy was anathema to him. There was one occasion, a long time ago, when he got into a minor tiff with the Wyoming head coach, but that was when Whit was still making the transition from two decades as an assistant coach to head coach and learning that the new job demanded different decorum. He conducted himself thereafter with great restraint and dignity.
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On another occasion, he made a bold, brutally honest comment — a warning, really — about where college football was headed with NIL that was widely quoted. He probably didn’t know the national impact it would make, but it proved wise and prescient and he was willing to take one for the team — college football, that is. He was the voice of reason.
Then he went back to work. He’d said what he said, now stop talking to him about it.
Former Utah football head coach Kyle Whittingham watches as the Utah Mammoth play the Seattle Kraken at Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham watches during game against Kansas, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Lawrence, Kan. | Charlie Riedel, Associated Press
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham greets fans as he makes his way into Rice-Eccles Stadium with the rest of the team before an NCAA football game against the Kansas State Wildcats in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News
Utah Football Head Coach Kyle Whittingham, left, and “College GameDay” analyst Nick Saban, right, talk during ESPN’s “College GameDay” in the President’s Circle at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News
BYU head coach Kalani Sitake and Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham talk prior to BYU and Utah playing at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham yells at the officials after no penalty was called after Utah running back Wayshawn Parker (1) was shoved by BYU defensive tackle John Taumoepeau (55) at BYU and Utah play at Lavell Edwards Stadium in Provo on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham looks on during the first half of an NCAA college football game against West Virginia Mountaineers, Saturday, Sept, 27, 2025, in Morgantown, W.Va. | William Wotring
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham talks to his players during a practice Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. | Anna Fuder, Utah Athletics
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham during the Big 12 NCAA college football media days in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. | LM Otero
Former Utah football coach Urban Meyer, left, passes the ball to new coach Kyle Whittingham after practice Friday Dec. 17, 2004. | August Miller
Utah Utes football head coach Kyle Whittingham reacts to a referee’s call during a game between the University of Utah Utes and the BYU Cougars held at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News
Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham claps with his team as after their lose to the TCU Horned Frogs at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. The TCU Horned Frogs defeated the Utah Utes 13-7. | Brice Tucker, Deseret News
Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham with his teams against USU in Logan on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham carries his granddaughter as he leaves the field after Utah defeated Baylor at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Saturday, September 7, 2024. Utah won 23-12. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham flash a “U” during a parade at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, as part of events leading up to the Rose Bowl. | Jeffrey_Allred
BYU football coach Kalani Sitake and University of Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham listen during the Coaches Legacy Gold Invitational by the National Kidney Foundation at Hidden Valley Country Club in Sandy, on Monday June 3, 2024. | Marielle Scott, Deseret News
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham looks on as players leave the field after warmups before an NCAA college football game against Washington, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson) | Lindsey Wasson, Associated Press
20170505 Coach Kyle Whittingham talks with his son Alex as University of Utah football team members gather during University of Utah graduation in Salt Lake City on Friday, May 5, 2017. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Utah coach Kyle Wittingham and quarterback Brian Johnson hold up the Sugar Bowl championship trophy after an NCAA football game in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. Utah defeated Alabama 31-17. (AP Photo/Dave Martin) | Dave Martin, Associated Press
Utah linebacker Devin Lloyd, second from left, celebrates alongside coach Kyle Whittingham, left, quarterback Cameron Rising and wide receiver Britain Covey (18) after Utah defeated Oregon 38-10 to win the Pac-12 Conference championship NCAA college football game Friday, Dec. 3, 2021, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chase Stevens) | Chase Stevens Associated Press
University of Utah coach Kyle Whittingham (R) and Alabama coach Nick Saban pose with the Sugar Bowl Trophy in a press conference prior to the Sugar Bowl 01/01/09 in New Orleans . Jeffrey D. Allred/Deseret News/photo | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham and his wife Jamie leave field in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023. Utah won 14-7. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Throughout my journalism career, I seemed to encounter Whittingham at every turn. I first met him when he was an all-conference linebacker at BYU. He turned up a few years later as a graduate assistant for the Cougars and began his ascent up the coaching ladder.
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Our sons played in a little league football game against one another. Those sons wound up playing a couple of seasons together on two of Whittingham’s teams at Utah. Whittingham won’t remember this, but I once asked him for a game jersey to give to a friend who was a Ute fan; Whittingham gladly obliged and had one waiting for me at his house.
I enjoyed talking to Kyle; he’s a deep thinker and given to introspection. He’s intense and intentional in everything he does. I especially enjoyed our conversations that veered from football to other subjects.
We shared an interest in music, and he told me about a trip to Paris in which he spent a good part of a day in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, paying homage at the grave of rock legend Jim Morrison. We spoke of our travels and he told me about annual trips he took to New York City with his wife Jaime. He liked the energy there, he said.
I knew his father, Fred, one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever met (up there with Jerry Sloan, Larry Miller,Rodney “Hot Rod” Hundley, Craig Garrick and Luke Staley). He pretty much despised writers, but for some reason he tolerated me. We got along. We struck up a couple of casual conversations while sitting around the dorm lounge at the Utes’ training camp in Price, Utah. The stories he told … they should have made a movie about Fred Whittingham.
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He was a man’s man with that Jerry Sloan, don’t-mess-with-me aura (and no one did), who always looked as if he had a lot on his mind. He was a former (unbeaten) Golden Gloves boxer and NFL middle linebacker who was nicknamed Mad Dog. It wasn’t much of a stretch to see where that came from.
Fred was self-contained, intense, tough, no-nonsense, taciturn, football smart and what would be called ruggedly handsome. He was exactly what Hollywood would cast as a head coach.
This also describes Kyle Whittingham, except he is a warmer personality.
He was Kyle’s hero — he literally tried to fill his shoes, wearing his father’s Size 13 sneakers (six sizes too big) to school one day. He tagged around with him at NFL camps. He learned the coaching trade at his knee.
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The only time I saw a crack in Kyle’s tough veneer was when I asked him about his father in 2009, shortly after he had been named the national coach of the year for the 2008 season. His voice failed him for a moment and he had to pause to control his emotions. Fred Whittingham, a career assistant coach for 25 years, died suddenly at age 64 in 2003, 14 months before his son became a head coach.
Fred missed it all.
As I wrote in 2009, Fred was there for the formative years, but not the victory lap.
They coached Utah’s defense together for three years. Kyle kept his father’s old playbooks and notebooks in his office for years, referring to them early in his coaching career. When he was agonizing over whether to accept a head coaching offer from BYU or Utah, years later, he drove to Provo and visited his father’s grave.
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“I’ve asked Kyle if he feels like his dad is there,” his mother Nancy once said. “He says there are times during a game when he feels like he’s right there next to him.”
So now Whittingham is stepping down as coach of the Utes at the age of 66, two years older than his father was at his death. Urban Meyer delivered two brilliant, lightning-strike years at Utah on his way to the big time and then handed the reins to Whittingham.
It was an incredibly tough act to follow and seemed like a recipe for failure. Whittingham not only maintained what Meyer had begun, he made it better — he sustained it. He met the daunting and historic challenge of moving to the Pac-12 in quick order, and then made another move to the Big 12. He created a brand; he made Utah one of college football’s elite programs and became the winningest coach in school history. It was a remarkable run.
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham, center, comes onto the field with his team before a game against Houston Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, in Houston. | Michael Wyke, Associated Press
In one of the most impressive games by a teenager, Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg did something no NBA player ever had before.
Dallas Mavericks’ No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg made NBA history on Monday against the Utah Jazz.
The 18-year-old became the youngest player ever to score 40 or more points in a game, surpassing LeBron James’ record set over two decades ago with the Cleveland Cavaliers. James did it a few months after he turned 19.
While it came in a losing effort against the Jazz, Flagg played the best game of his young career, going 13-for-25 from the field and leading the Mavericks to a close finish in a game they would have otherwise been trampled.
For Flagg, it’s a historic moment for the teenager from Maine, who reclassified from high school early so he could enroll at Duke and take the quickest path to the NBA possible. He led the Blue Devils to one of their strongest teams of the 21st Century before falling in a heartbreaking loss to Houston in the Final Four.
As a franchise, Dallas has been reeling since trading away homegrown superstar Luka Doncic to the Lakers in one of the most shocking trades in sports history earlier this year. Winning the draft lottery and the subsequent selection of Flagg have helped bring some optimism back to an organization that has desperately needed it.
The Mavericks recently fired the man behind the Doncic, Nico Harrison, in an attempt to win back a betrayed fanbase.
Although a loss to the Jazz won’t turn things around, the historic night for Flagg is a sign that the future might be bright in Dallas afterall. Flagg turns 19 on Dec. 21, nine days before the birthday of the 40-point record he just broke in James.
