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There is a rule of thumb in college football these days which states the higher you climb, the less open you become. Just try to extract an entertaining quote from a top-10 team. It's nearly impossible. Particularly if that top-10 team happens to be Utah.
It's a shame head coach Kyle Whittingham doesn't spend time working on a monologue or knock-knock jokes ? anything beyond "Iowa State is a good team" and "it should be a good game." As the Utes await today's contest, it's safe to say they haven't jeopardized their chances by talking too much. Whittingham gets a lot of credit for being prepared, and rightly so. What I'd like to know is how much of that time involves practicing the art of the non-answer answer. When you ask one of his players about the Pac-10, he'll say he's only focusing on the next game. Ask about the soft early schedule, he'll say he's focusing only on the next game. Ask about the bird flu scare, and you're probably going to get the same answer. That doesn't mean the Utes are uncooperative. Every day after practice, Mondays through Wednesdays, there they are, available and willing. If you need to interview three players, two will patiently wait as you finish up with the first. Trouble is, getting anyone to say anything beyond the predictable isn't easy. When I asked kicker Joe Phillips if the Utes were getting the national respect they deserve, he said, "Honestly, I haven't paid much attention to it. They're (the coaches) really good at keeping us focused on us and keeping us as a family." Already he had hit two of the Big Three of non-answer answers: focus, team/family and one-game-at-a-time. I'll give credit where it's due. Phillips did say he doesn't really know how they're being treated by SportsCenter, etc., because "my wife and I don't have a TV or anything, so we don't watch a lot of TV and stuff." Starving student, right? "We could probably do it, but it's just a waste of time to us." So there's that. I followed up by asking whether he'd rather play good teams early in the year or easy ones. "I really don't have a preference," he said. He went on to say it was "really fun" opening with Pitt, "fun" playing Oregon early last year and "fun" playing New Mexico, UNLV and San Jose State. In other words, he wasn't going to put one ahead of the other at any particular time. That finished, I moved on to defensive tackle Sealver Siliga, who is usually one of the better interviews. I asked the same questions and got basically the same answers. He did say he was fine with the attention they've been getting. As to whether he preferred playing the toughest games early or late in the season, he said, " College ball is college ball. If you don't play well against one team, you can lose to anybody. I look at everybody as a team that can come in and beat us." Joe Namath, where are you? I asked Siliga about ISU being a sort of warm-up to the kind of teams they'll face next year in the Pac-10. He said he's only thinking about this year. Time for me to go. Moving on to receiver Shaky Smithson, I asked about national respect. "We don't go into that," he said. "We'll wait until the end of the season to see who's talking about us." I asked whether he preferred playing the tough part of the schedule early in the year or late. "I just like to play football," he said. I decided to go a different direction in hopes of a different answer. I asked whether he'd ever been to Iowa. No, but he did have a junior college receiver coach who attended ISU. Aha! An anecdote. "Have you talked with him?" I said. "Yes," said Smithson. At that point I'm almost salivating. "Did he give you trouble, tell you the Cyclones were going to win?" "Not at all," he said. "He hasn't said that at all. He just said it will be a good game on Saturday." All of which told me one thing: When it comes to saying nothing, the Utes couldn't be better prepared. Utes on the air Utah (4-0) at Iowa St. (3-1) Today, 5 p.m. Jack Trice Stadium, Ames, Iowa TV: Fox College Sports Radio: 700 AM e-mail: rock@desnews.com
