I’ve never been completely unplugged, and I’ve never looked back. – Fred Whittingham
SALT LAKE CITY — When Fred Whittingham decided he wanted to break into coaching after a successful career in corporate America, he approached the same guy who’d advised him against that career path nearly 20 years ago — his big brother.
It was a move that may be unusual in college football, but it didn’t surprise Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham.
“It’s in his DNA,” he said of Fred’s decision four years ago to move from business to coaching at age 46. “Just like it’s in mine. In fact, the vast majority of coaches, it’s ingrained in their system.”
Fred said that while he pursued a successful career in sales and marketing, his heart was never far from the football field. That’s because his father and two older brothers coached and, regardless of where they worked, he spent time supporting them in any way he could.
“I’ve never been completely unplugged, and I’ve never looked back,” said Fred Whittingham Jr., who finally got his coaching opportunity four years after he changed careers with a promotion in January. “I attended every game I could. If (my dad) was going to be at Utah, I’m going to support my father.”
Changes in the corporate structure at McGraw-Hill led Fred Whittingham to consider some life changes of his own.
“I’d been talking to Kyle about the possibility of getting back into coaching,” he said. “We knew it would be a stretch to go right into a coaching spot.”
But while he may never have drawn a paycheck for coaching, he didn’t think it was as much of a stretch as it might appear at first blush.
“I felt like I knew a lot about football, and I’d also been involved in performance coaching,” he said. “I was coaching, just not football players.” He was also involved in marketing, something that made him very attractive to his brother, who is six years his senior, as the Utes made their jump to the Pac-12.
“I’d reached a point in my life where I didn’t care that it was unpredictable,” Fred said, noting that a lot has changed for college coaches in the last two decades. “I was going to make the leap of faith and change careers.”
In 2012, Kyle hired him to be the Director of Player Personnel, which meant he did “all the recruiting that can be done here in the office — organize recruiting areas, manage our recruiting board and recruiting database, and decide how we’re going to market the Utah football brand to recruits.”
It also meant identifying prospects that the coaching staff would go evaluate, and then manage what kind of recruiting effort a player might get from Utah.
“It was very applicable to what I did as a sales manager in pursuing recruits,” he said. “Recruits are like clients. You’re trying to sell them something.”
The one thing he never did was act as an extra coach, even though that was the job he really wanted.
“I’ve always felt like the best way to get the next job is do a great job at your current one,” Fred said. “And the next job will find you.”
He feels like his efforts helped the team better identify and communicate with recruits, especially his efforts on social media. Utah didn’t even have a football Facebook page when he was hired in 2012. Under him the emphasis on social media communication has been massive and effective.
“We weren’t utilizing it at all in recruiting,” he said. Athlon Magazine ranked Utah’s twitter account No. 6 in December 2015. “Kyle trusted me with that. …I feel like I’ve contributed to (the team’s success).”
His brother agreed.
“He was doing a very good job for us in that recruiting role,” Kyle said. “I didn’t want to disrupt that. But an opportunity came and it was in the best interest of the program to hire him.”
Kyle said Fred was always on his short list of coaches he’d like to hire if the right opportunity was presented. While Fred said he wanted to be coaching two years ago, he wasn’t discouraged.
That's because while there is an intense, almost tangible loyalty within the Whittingham clan, there is also the understanding that when it comes to business, nobody gets special treatment.
“I would have loved to have any one of those (jobs)," Fred said. "But each time he made that hire, I understood he was doing what was in the best interest of the program and not letting his relationship with me as his brother interfere with that.”
And then, as fate would have it, another opportunity presented itself to Fred this winter when his good friend and former Utah defensive coordinator Kalani Sitake hired his former teammate Ty Detmer to be the Cougars' offensive coordinator. They asked him to interview for the job of coaching running backs, and he said he would.
He was upfront with his brother about the opportunity to be considered for a job at BYU, and his brother said he understood. The day before Fred was supposed to interview, however, Kyle came to him and said he may not need to make the drive to Provo.
“That night, Kyle offered me the job coaching tight ends,” he said. “Had Kalani offered me that job and I didn’t have this opportunity here, I would have taken it no question about it because I wanted to coach. I love Kalani; I love Ty, and it’s my alma mater. There would have been a lot of positives to making that move. Ultimately, I felt like here the opportunity is better.”
It was, after all, a program he feels like he’s invested in, especially the program this staff has built in the Pac-12.
“And Kyle believed in me,” he said. “It would have been very hard to leave,” Fred said he feels very comfortable coaching tight ends, even though he played running back in college.
“I didn’t feel like the learning curve was that steep,” he said. “And there are some similarities, like blocking and running routes.”
As for working for his brother, Fred said the way Kyle runs the program makes it easy to work with a relative.
“You always know what to expect,” Fred said. “Not just with his personality, because he’s very consistent with his personality. He’s the same guy every day. But our yearly calendar is very structured and organized. We know what’s coming next week, next month.” In an unpredictable profession, Kyle Whittingham offers stability in “structure and organization.”
Kyle said he sees their efforts as a staff as more of a collaboration.
“We’ve got some smart guys on our staff,” he said. “It would be pretty foolish not to listen to them. I value their opinions, and I encourage them to voice their opinions. I’ve you’ve got 10 guys in a room and they all think the same way, you don’t need nine of them. You’ve got to have varying opinions.” As for coaching with one of this three brothers for the first time, Kyle Whittingham said is conservatively complimentary with “so far so good.”
They had a great example in their father of someone who showed that familial ties don’t have to poison a professional relationship.
“My dad set a great example of how to operate under those circumstances,” said Kyle Whittingham, who worked for his late father and then had his father working under him a few years later. “ And just the maturity we both bring, we’re handling it well. He’s a very good coach. He’s doing exactly what we had projected.”
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