New Big 12 Power’s Decision for Elite Coach’s Eventual Replacement Is Deeply Risky

Kyle Whittingham has roamed the sidelines at Utah since 1994, starting as a defensive line coach, then as defensive coordinator and eventually head coach in 2005, after the departure of Urban Meyer. While Meyer went on to earn a reputation as one of the sport’s elite coaches at Florida and Ohio State, Whittingham has done quite well in Salt Lake City .

At 64, Whittingham logically could be approaching the end of his career . However, the move the program made on Monday, to name defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as head coach in waiting , is a rare one for modern college football and understandably so for those who followed the sport closely in the 2000s.

The practice of naming a head coach in waiting for an aging head coach initially led to some success. Jimbo Fisher won a national championship at Florida State after taking over for Bobby Bowden. Chip Kelly eventually thrived at Oregon after serving as head coach in waiting under Mike Bellotti. Bret Bielema excelled at Wisconsin after getting the successor tag under Barry Alvarez.

But with those successes, there are plenty of failures. Kentucky’s Joker Phillips went 13-24 after taking over for Rich Brooks, while Purdue’s Danny Hope was 22-27 following in the footsteps of Joe Tiller.

No such situation was as much of a boondoggle as the one at West Virginia in 2011, when the program hired Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen to take over for Bill Stewart two years later, against Stewart’s wishes. After former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Colin Dunlap said on a radio program that Stewart asked them to dig up dirt on Holgorsen, Stewart resigned, and Holgorsen took over as head coach immediately. Holgorsen went on to be relatively successful at WVU, but the circumstances around his hiring embarrassed the university.

“Let us all hope West Virginia is the last school to ever employ a coach-in-waiting,” ESPN’s Andrea Adelson wrote after the scandal.

Perhaps the best argument against the head-coach-in-waiting tag is that it is essentially meaningless. While the likely goal is to keep a top coordinator such as Scalley from defecting to another program (say, newly open Utah State, which fired head coach Blake Anderson on Tuesday ), there is no guarantee the strategy will work.

Texas named Will Muschamp as head coach in waiting under Mack Brown in 2008. He left to take over Florida barely two years later.

The same thing happened at Maryland with James Franklin in February 2009 under Ralph Friedgen. Franklin would take the Vanderbilt job in late 2010, and Friedgen was fired just weeks later.

That risk would seem to be lessened with Scalley, a former Utah defensive back and member of Whittingham’s staff since 2007. The 44-year-old comes with significant baggage, though.

This is the second time Scalley has been given the head coach in waiting commitment. It was rescinded in 2020, after news that Scalley had used a racial slur in a text message with a recruit in 2013, per the Deseret News . An internal investigation by law firm Husch Blackwell uncovered other accusations that Scalley used racially insensitive language during Utah practices, with one former player claiming Scalley using the N-word toward him at practice. No other Utah player or coach verified that incident, and Scalley denied the claim.

Scalley, who was suspended for three weeks in the 2020 offseason after news of the 2013 text message, apologized at the time.

“This language is offensive and hurtful to not only the African American community, but to all. Immediately after sending it, I apologized to the recipient and his family,” Scalley said. “I am also heartbroken over the potential breach of trust with my fellow coaches and with the young men in our program, both past and present. I am truly sorry, and I own up to the hurtful effects of my choice.”

Even if Utah is comfortable with the work Scalley has done to make up for the issues that arose in 2020, naming him as Whittingham’s successor seems like an unnecessary step. There is little to stop him from leaving for an appealing head coaching job in the future if he isn’t comfortable with Whittingham’s retirement timeline. If he stays and Whittingham elects to remain as head coach for the foreseeable future, it could cause strain between the coaching staff’s two most important figures.

Given where Utah sits in college football — the program was voted No. 1 in the Big 12 preseason media poll Tuesday — athletic director Mark Harlan would have a wide array of candidates to choose from when Whittingham retires, including Scalley. But with Monday’s decision, he’s boxed himself in with just one of his options, and he runs the risk of alienating those within the program if he tries to go in another direction.

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