What do we expect from Kyle

responding to a question from Salt Lake Tribune columnist, Kurt Kragthorpe (twitter.com/tribkurt) I wrote this utterly too long essay.

the Question: Whit apologized, saying fans deserve better. What do fans expect when they show up?

the Answer: Fans expect a showing. Going into the TCU game I was half expecting to win and half expecting to lose. A loss would have been acceptable but I am a lot more close to upset with the throttling we got was just unacceptable, especially at home especially when you have a crowd that fired up.

Kyle cannot stop people from dropping balls, or the quarterback missing throws, all of which happened. But Jordan Wynn is 19 and I found myself being more upset with the play calling than anything else. However, in the world where Kyle is the highest paid person in the state of Utah, the buck clearly stops with him. Kyle can do a few things: YELL AT RODERICK TO RUN THE BALL!

More importantly however, I think the ultimate problem is that Utah, under Kyle had not experienced a big game situation like this (the Sugar Bowl was entirely different for a lot of reasons). I think the four biggest factors in the Utes losing was College GameDay, the numbers 3 and 5, the camouflage jerseys, and TCU being really good. The fourth one, Kyle can't do anything about, so we'll focus on the first three. Basically what those three things boiled down to is pressure.

This was a pressure filled game that, on Saturday, Utah had no business being in, what I expect from Kyle is to be able for his guys to handle pressure. And this pressure game is only the beginning. If Utah is playing for a Rose Bowl birth, Pac 12 championship, or [only peeing my pants slightly] a trip to the national championship, the pressure will be 572358x more than it was for a Mountain West game in the middle of the season, that happened to have an ESPN show beforehand.

Long answer: above. Short answer: handle pressure better than you did.

However, there is hope. Since, as I mentioned, this is Utah's first game of such magnitude (again, Sugar Bowl entirely different) Kyle knows what he did wrong [he better] and he now knows what that pressure feels like, for him, hius staff, and his players. Every coach needs to learn, and I feel as though this is Kyle's learning experience. If he didn't learn, then the Pac 12 experiment will be scary, if he does, based on his talent as a coach, and the talent of the players he can recruit, the sky could be the limit.