Maybe Kyle Whittingham has his football team figured out, after all.
It needs to feel some heat.
It's been that sort of football season for the Utes. They've acted like 11-year-olds assigned to clean their rooms. They start out enthusiastically enough but eventually run out of gas and/or enthusiasm.
So finally Utah's coach reached for the dramatic. And it worked.
The Utes kept alive their bowl hopes, Saturday, with a 43-13 win over Wyoming. For all intents and purposes, it was finished at halftime, when the Utes scored two touchdowns in the final 2:13. Or not. With these Utes, a great first half does not a game make. Nor do three quarters. That's been their problem — they haven't been able to finish. They've spent the season closing like a song on an old 45 r.p.m. No cymbals, no crash of drums, no power licks on the guitar. Just fading, fading . . . and . . . out.
"It's a mindset, a psychological thing," said Whittingham, "and maybe we got over the hump today."
Nothing a dose of good old-fashioned hyperbole couldn't fix.
The Utes' situation has been obvious for weeks. With the exception of Saturday — when they outscored Wyoming 10-0 and drove as far as the Cowboy 2 late in the game — they've been dreadful closers. They'd get to the fourth quarter and call no mas.
It didn't matter what they did earlier — by the time the clock got to the final 15 minutes, they were on the bus. Consequently, they took themselves out of title contention with consecutive league losses to Colorado State and San Diego State. They nearly erased themselves from bowl contention, as well.
They looked a lot like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" — unable to find a good ending.
It's not as though the Utes haven't moved the ball. They entered the game second in the league in total offense. But scoring? Zilch down the stretch. Everyone could count on the Utes giving them a chance.
Before Saturday, the Utes had scored exactly one touchdown in the final period. A Humanities class could do that. They were outscored 51-3 in conference games and 72-16 overall in the final quarter.
With that in mind, Whittingham whipped out the old tried-and-true Super Bowl analogy. Not only did he vow to fix the Utes' late-game problems, he raised the specter of bowl game extinction.
Before Utah's 42-32 win over UNLV, he declared every game thereafter a "Super Bowl" — minus Paul McCartney at halftime, of course.
A biggest-game-of-their-lives scenario.
OK, so it was dramatic. What else could he do for help, call the Coast Guard?
Consequently, despite Utah's 33-13 lead going into the final quarter, Saturday, Whittingham wasn't relaxed. He'd had a front row view for Utah's late collapse against TCU, when the Utes went scoreless the final 25 minutes of regulation and lost in overtime. He was in the same spot when Utah went quiet the final 26 minutes of a three-point win against Air Force; there also for the failure at Colorado State, when they were outscored 18-3 down the stretch.
Even in the win at UNLV there were problems. Leading 42-20 going into the final period, they allowed 12 points, scoring none.
For the Utes, quittin' time and the end of the game were two different things.
A 20-point lead with 15 minutes to go against Wyoming wasn't necessarily safe. The mystery of the missing quarters was alive.
"Well, we solved it today," said Whittingham.
Meanwhile, they continued on their anthem, claiming every single game is their own personal Super Bowl.
In which case, they now have two more of them than the Seattle Seahawks.
"Most guys don't get to play in any Super Bowls; our guys get to play in four," said Whittingham. "So we have two to go."
Which raises the obvious question: What is Janet Jackson doing next week?
E-mail: rock@desnews.com