KW said that he would make his decision based on what is best for the program. IMO, if he was leaving, making a decision to retire before yesterday (national signing day) was necessary for the best of the program. Why, if he retires now, all of those signees can be released from the NLI. If he retires after this coming Monday, the time for current players to enter the portal, will be extended 30 days after his announcement. Not good for the program.
I heard Bill Riley and Spence Checketts speculate that no announcement simply means that KW is under contract to coach for 2 more years and he is just going on business as normal.
I don’t either. He has had such a strong, long term impact on this program, that I’d hate to see it end after a down year end, or have his career end without some success in the B12.
I also think, that from listening to his interviews about the many recent changes in CF, NIL, transfer portal, etc., that he’s motivated to develop a new approach to recruiting and coaching. He doesn’t seem worn down.
It will be a different kind of season for 2025. With the mass exodus of players to graduation, there are going to be a lot of new faces, which can be a selling point in the portal. I also believe we are going to see guys hitting the portal (no surprise) who some will kvetch about, but I believe there may be a few of them this time who will be asked to leave - something different from past teams.
What stands out so far for me with the recruiting class is how big some of these DB’s are. Call me old fashioned, but having kids with size, speed and quicks in the secondary is never a bad thing. They can clean up a lot of plays and make a QB’s throwing windows get very small.
Not too many offensive players, but flipping the RB from Ole Miss was a minor coup. Hope he turns into Zach Moss 2.0.
Maybe I missed something with this big signing class (something we haven’t seen for a while) is there is not a lot of possible “sign and send” kids. I am sure there are a few, but so far none have been announced formally - which is unusual. Given the time investment costs of “Sign and Send” I expect we will be seeing fewer of them in the future. More likely, we will see a lot of Stake Presidents and Bishops extolling the value of “Sports Conversion” - by playing and living a good life of LDS church values, you can create more interest in the LDS church for the missionaries in the field to work with. It was a thing on the QT that happened years ago. Now it will likely become more normative.
If Kyle is indeed back for 2025, he’s going to have a bunch of new RBs to work with. Glover, Woods, and now Stanley are all going into the portal. Bernard graduates. Honestly, not a big loss to see Stanley going. He basically did nothing after the SUU game when he was wide open on two long TD receptions due to poor coverage by the T’Birds. Glover had some decent moments but never developed into the back we had hoped. I’m a little surprised Woods is leaving. He sat out the year with an injury after coming over from Idaho.
That leaves Mike Mitchell, who also kind of disappeared, and the new recruit. Utah will need two, three, or four guys from the portal.
Got a text from my son in the HS coaching ranks saying that the equipment guys were told to put Rising’s name on a locker and equipment. Love what Cam has done, but that ship needs to sail.
Pepa is going to the portal too. That’s too bad. He has looked very good at times. Damien Alford is gone too. That’s fine. I think I saw him on the field one time, and Utah inexplicably called for him to throw a pass on a trick play. It was picked off.
n the portal the rest looks like a nice base to build a future on.