.....Kyle Whittingham is one of the things to love about college football?

The games are great. Every Saturday in the late summer and through the Autumn, we tune in and watch as Universities and Colleges both large and small send out their weekend warriors, their crazy brave. And every year we have to endure the unsatisfying end to what is week-in and week-out one of the most engaging spectacles in sport.
I am firmly in the camp of one who longs for, desires, a satisfying and final champion to such a great exhibition. I would say that I am in the minority, but I don't know if that is true. I really don't think it matters. There are many arguments for and against and I did not come here to rehash these. I will mention the one argument against my wish for a playoff that always made sense to me. College football is the only major sport in which a large number of teams end their seasons on a high note. The NFL is the Pantheon of sports in America today and yet at the end of the season only one team and their fans end on a high note. Sure there are teams like the Falcons of 2008 that have a great deal of unexpected success, but without a Super Bowl Championship it is still a season short of a final victory. In the college bowl system, half of the teams that play in a bowl game end their season with a win. The boosters are happy, the administrations are happy, the coaches are happy, and most importantly, the players and students are happy.
Yes, I think I might be changing my mind. While college football always seems to leave many of us wanting more, so many others end the year so happy, who is to say. While I'll always be a fan of pro football I will say that college is just a different kind of game. It stands to reason that one of sports "different" people resides in this singular sport.
I think that Kyle Whittingham is the finest example of someone who knows the rules and decides that he should completely ignore them. His Utah Utes are in one of the have-not conferences. They are so unlikely to win a national title that the state attorney general of Utah has threatened to file anti-trust sanctions against the NCAA. While that might be a bit excessive, you have to admire the notion of defending one's own. Did I also mention that they made it through the entire 2008 football season without losing a game. It might stand to mention that they were the only Div1-A, I'm sorry, the only FBS school to not have a single loss. They also crushed Alabama in their bowl game. That is the same University of Alabama team that was the #1 team in the country for five weeks and only surrendered that ranking in a loss to eventual national champion Florida Gators. And this was in the SEC Championship Game. The Championship game of arguably the best conference in college football for the past decade.
But back to Coach Whittingham. The BCS rules state that all the coaches of the schools in the FBS will vote for the winner of the mythical BCS Championship Game as the national champion for college football. Coach Whittingham decided to skirt these rules. He and only he voted his Utah Utes as the National Champion of College Football. I am glad that he took the stand. To do otherwise would be to do a disservice to the men who worked so hard and beat everyone who came before them. Perhaps they might not beat USC, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, or even Penn State. But we'll never know. College football prides itself on the fact that though many of its participants do not go on to careers in football, they train their men to go on to be the best that they can in life. I think Coach Whittingham has set an example of leadership and loyalty that players, coaches and administrators should look to for guidance in the future.