Urban Meyer: Kyle Whittingham is the best coach in college football

Urban Meyer has long had great respect for Kyle Whittingham and what he’s accomplished throughout his career. The pair worked together for two seasons when Meyer was the head coach at Utah, and Whittingham was promoted to that role when Meyer left for Florida in 2005.

Since then, Whittingham has gone on to become the winningest coach in all-time program history with a 160-75 all-time record. He’s clearly the greatest coach in Utes history, but Meyer went a step farther with his opinion in a recent episode of Urban’s Take with Tim May.

“I’ve said many times Kyle Whittingham’s ones of the best coaches in college football,” Meyer said. “”Now he’s the best. He’s the best coach in college football.”

Meyer’s comments come based on how Whittingham has fought through adversity to keep the Utes in the Pac-12 title hunt this season. Despite playing without quarterback Cam Rising since the beginning of the season, Whittingham has led Utah to a 6-1 record.

The Utes most recently came off a 34-32 victory against USC, using some late-game heroics on a 26-yard scramble from Bryson Barnes to set up the game-winning field goal. Barnes, the third-string quarterback to start the season, raced past the Trojans defense to the 19-yard line.

To Meyer, that epitomizes the toughness that Whittingham-coached teams have always had.

“It’s a third string quarterback in Bryson Barnes that, if you watch that drive, he threw a pick six in the fourth quarter,” he said. “They didn’t score a couple of times. USC takes the lead and this guy takes ’em on a two-minute drive. He runs over a safety. He scrambles and puts them in field goal range after a penalty. It’s really why you watch college football.

“Kyle’s comment about Caleb Williams is a Heisman, which he is. Caleb Williams is an incredible player. ‘They have their Heisman, we have a pig farmer from Utah.’ I wish we were doing that game because I wanted to go watch ’em and shake his hand at quarterback because you know how I love toughness. Go back and watch that last drive. He ran over the safety, but the last one he runs 30 yards on a play that’s dead and they kick a field goal and beat USC.”

Whittingham has been incredibly loyal to Utah without his career. His is currently tied with Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State for the second-longest tenured head coach in college football behind Iowa‘s Kirk Ferentz. Whittingham has been an assistant on the Utes staff dating all the way back to 1994, marking nearly 30 years in Salt Lake City.

That almost wasn’t the case, however, as Meyer recalls that he almost didn’t retain Whittingham upon becoming the head coach in 2003. All it took was spending a little bit of time with him to change his mind.

It turned out to be a good thing he did, as the Utes finished 12-0 in the 2004 season and won the Fiesta Bowl with Whittingham serving as defensive coordinator.

“I got hired there and Kyle interviewed for the job when I did,” Meyer said. “Everybody told me, ‘don’t hire him.’ He’s kind of a unique personality and I had no plan of hiring him. Then once I got hired and I settled down, I realized how good they were on defense. I went to dinner with him and his wife and I’m sitting there looking like, ‘what am I stupid?’

“This guy knows the conference. He knows the personnel on our team. He’s a good person. Yeah, he’s a little different personality, but so am I. The two of us, I can’t imagine a better working relationship even to this day. That’s how close I am with him. That’s the respect the respect I have for him.”

Whittingham went on to follow in Meyer’s footsteps in 2008, leading Utah to a 13-0 record and Rose Bowl win. His success led to an invite to join the Pac-12 in 2011, and now the coach has won two conference championships in the past two years.

They’ll face a tough path in getting to a third, with games against Oregon and Washington still on the schedule for this season. But if there’s any coach Urban Meyer believes can get the job done, it’s Kyle Whittingham.

“He’s culture and discipline,” Meyer said. “He’s tough as nails. His father was an NFL coach for a long time and I mean, Fred Whittingham is one of the toughest cats. I met him before he passed away. I can go on and on about Kyle Whittingham and what he’s done. He’s not one of the best. He’s the best coach in college football.”