Utah coaches earn first victory over new BYU Football coaching staff... on the greens

The Utah football coaches took down BYU on Monday in the Rivalry for Charity golf event at the Hidden Valley Country Club in Sandy, Utah. The Ute team consisted of head coach, Kyle Whittingham and current assistants Fred Whittingham, Morgan Scalley, and Aaron Roderick. BYU trotted out head coach Kalani Sitake, current assistants Ty Detmer and Ilaisa Tuiaki, and graduate assistant JD Falslev.

Salt Lake Tribune’s Jay Drew reported that Utah won the event by five strokes:

This is a good sign for football in the state, Bronco Mendenhall and Kyle Whittingham both did not attend the event during the last two years. Going from unwillingness to participate in a charity event to the BYU coaches singing “Utah Man” after their loss, is a significant improvement in terms of relations between the two schools.

However, are we confident that winning by five strokes (the same amount of times that Utah has beaten BYU in a row) wasn’t some kind of troll job by Utah’s staff. What are the chances that Scalley double bogeyed the final hole on purpose so that they would win by five strokes instead of six or seven? I’m going with at least 30 percent.

Cougar fans may be disappointed with Monday’s results as they expected the tables to turn on the rivalry. Many feel that as a first year head coach you can’t let your rival beat you the first time you play on grass.

There has been controversy over the years in this event. Whittingham wanted to bring in some pros to avoid singing BYU’s fight song and in 2014, Utah had some non-former players or coaches on the team. Last year, Hans Olsen fielded a team with former player Ben Criddle but added two former BYU golfers to the mix. They would go on to win by 5 stokes.

Side note, how bad must Hans and Criddle be at golf that they were only able to win by 5 strokes with two former D-1 golfers on their team?

Regardless of what the “rules” say now, BYU has to find a way to win here. Apparently Steve Young has his own charity golf event every year, why not pick him? Charity is great and at least they didn’t tie like they did in 2014, but what a better way to stoke the rivalry flames than trotting out a team of Kalani Sitake and three randomly affiliated BYU athletic department golf stars?

But I digress, another loss on the field will surely bring out some chirps about the new staff’s inexperience and how they were out coached. OR, maybe Kalani didn’t want to show all of his tricks until they get on the gridiron this fall? This is a classic page out of the Greg Popovich playbook, who never plays good teams tough in the regular season so as to not give away strategy for a potential playoff match up.

BYU is desperate to have something to hang their hat on in this rivalry, they didn’t get it on the greens in Sandy, but perhaps they will in September.