Colorado is coming to town to play Utah Saturday, and if that looks like a mismatch on the field, you should see the one on the sideline.
Deion Sanders vs. Kyle Whittingham.
Coach Prime vs. Coach Whit.
Hollywood vs. Marlboro Man.
Could there be any two people more different on the planet?
There’s more than 53 ⅓ yards of field that separate these two.
Be glad for both styles; it keeps things interesting.
One is called Prime, as in Prime Time and other variations on the theme; the other is, uh, well, Coach Whittingham.
Prime is the nickname of the nickname he picked up as a high school athlete — Prime Time — and he doesn’t just embrace it, he promotes and exploits it. He puts “Prime” nameplates on his trucks. He wears sweatshirts and hats bearing “Prime.” He has a line of clothing and sunglasses called “Coach Prime” and plans to add other products to the list. He has filed trademarks for “Coach Prime,” “Prime 21,” “Prime effect,” “Prime Time.”
Whittingham is not a nickname guy, unless it’s “Coach Whit.”
Or Sir.
Whit wears a ring, Sanders wears bling.
Prime wears heavy gold chains. No son of Fred Whittingham — aka Mad Dog, the former Golden Gloves boxer and NFL middle linebacker — is going to wear jewelry, period.
Sanders likes to talk; Whittingham doesn’t.
Prime never met a microphone or TV camera he didn’t like. For his first visit with his new team at Colorado, he invited the cameras right into the room and gave them a show. He’s a tour de force — outspoken, brash, blunt. Like Muhammad Ali, he likes banter — his banter. He likes it so much that he has filed for trademark on some of his pet phrases such as “Daddy Buck,” “It’s Personal,” “I ain’t hard 2 find” and “We coming.”
He talks so much that you might miss the substance and homespun wisdom in there. Such as this: When the culprits were identified for stealing his players’ belongings at the Rose Bowl, Prime said, “Let’s not crucify and punish these high school kids. ... Let’s not abort the rest of their opportunities and lives because of a mistake. ... Let’s make sure those kids atone for what transpired … but they don’t lose the opportunities to change their lives. They are kids. They made a stupid, dumb, idiotic mistake. When I was 17, 18, so did I. All right? So did you.”
Or this: “I’ve never seen or heard of an extremely successful peaceful person go out of their way to demean, criticize, hate, cuss, lie and belittle someone they’ve never met before in their lives. I once told a fan at a baseball game if it makes you feel better to come here and boo me every day I will leave you tickets.”
Whittingham, on the other hand, took a vow of silence. He’s self-contained, insular. He keeps secrets better than the CIA. There’s a lot more there than he lets on. He’s a thinker; he just tends to keep most of his thoughts to himself. He’s a clone of his father-hero Fred, another strong, silent type whose teammates gave him the sarcastic nickname of “Gabby.”
Prime is a quote machine; Whittingham, not so much (because that would mean he would have to, you know, talk).
Prime courts attention. Everything is about him, whether he wants it to be or not. All by himself, he has made Colorado the most watched 4-7 team in the country through the sheer force of his personality. He’s part coach, part evangelist, part entertainer. Somehow he finds himself involved in varying degrees of controversy, sometimes due to no fault of his own. A head coach publicly criticized him for wearing a hat and sunglasses during interviews. Go figure. Prime said that made their game “personal.” And there you go — headlines.
Coach Whit might maintain the lowest profile of any head coach of a top-25 program in the country. He could be in the witness protection program. He tends to fade into the background, like furniture, whenever he can. His first response when asked to do a feature interview about him years ago: “Can you make this about the program?”
He once said, “Being in the spotlight is not my deal. There are people who don’t like attention. Then there are people who call attention to themselves by pretending not to want attention. That’s not me. It’s all about the players.”
Pin him down and he will offer very substantive, bright observations about the topic du jour, but he’d really rather go through a very public career anonymously. At the conclusion of a fairly lengthy interview recently, he said, “Just don’t quote me, OK?” Wait, what? His mother says he didn’t even like childhood birthdays — too much attention. His email/text responses are as terse as Morse code.
If you walk into Whit’s office looking for controversy, you better take it next door. He’s non-nonsense. He won’t engage in that sort of thing.
Whittingham, 63, is the wise old veteran after 38 years in the coaching business, 19 as head coach of the Utes. Sanders, even though he’s 56, is the new kid on the Division I block, with four years of head coaching experience. That’s 239 games as a head coach vs. 44. On Saturday, they’ll stand on opposite sides of the field. That seems fitting.
