Utah coach Kyle Whittingham has a surprise answer on the Pac-12's most talented team

Published Oct. 20, 2016 4:38 p.m. ET

Aaron Torres

Simply put, there might not be a more underappreciated program in college football than the Utah Utes, and there might not be a more underappreciated coach in the country than Kyle Whittingham. In 11 years in charge at the school, Whittingham has led the Utes to nine bowl games, and helped transition the program from a Mountain West power, into the much more rugged Pac-12, where they are now a regular contender.

And on Tuesday, Whittingham joined “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” to talk about all things college football heading into the season. The two discussed a wide-ranging number of topics, from scheduling to Notre Dame’s recent suspension.

Cowherd also explained why he thought the Utes would win the Pac-12. But when he followed up to ask Whittingham who the coach thought was the league’s most talented team, he got a somewhat surprising answer.

“I’m going to have to go with ‘SC. I think year-in and year-out, if you just look at the sheer talent level of the players, man-for-man, you’d be hard-pressed to find a team in the country that’s superior to USC. I think the amount of players they have in the NFL bears that out. That’s always a good barometer of what kind of talent you have in a program, or have had in a program through the years is how many players you’ve placed in the NFL.”

“Well I love it here, this is home. My family’s here. I think this is the best kept secret in the country, Salt Lake City. It’s great here. In the off-season I can go skiing in the morning and golf in the afternoon, and there’s not a lot of places you can do that. It’s just a great area… when we get recruits up here, there’s a lot of misconceptions about Salt Lake or the state of Utah, but when we get the recruits to actually come up here and take a visit, almost to a man they say ‘hey, this is nothing as far as what I was expecting, or what I was envisioning.’ They all seem to fall in love with the place.”