When Kyle Whittingham crossed the field at the end of the game – pleased with a 28-14 victory at Utah – to shake Gus Malzahn’s hand, he chatted with the UCF coach for a few seconds and then grinned broadly.

Why shouldn’t he?

So. You know why.

Grimaces are much more common in Utah football than grins. The Utes’ season was — note the past tense, with no postseason games to qualify for — far shorter than it seemed, despite the burps and hiccups against the Knights.

After a 4-0 start, the Utes struggled through a period of misery, suffering seven straight losses, most of them close ones, limping through injuries, searching for a quarterback before and after Cam Rising’s injury, and battling through the departure of a veteran offensive coordinator and the disappearance of any trace of explosiveness in the offense and the blowing away of conjecture and rumors that their longtime head coach, the rock of the program, was ready to take over the football giving up good senior living in favor of beauties.

Hmmm. While there was a sense of sentimentality in Utah Friday night, with some sort of group wondering whether future head coach Morgan Scalley, as the Utes’ hackneyed vernacular goes, was the next man up, almost everything else seemed celebratory.

The Utes dominated – in a way.

The defense was formidable and opportunistic, giving up yards but capitalizing on three turnovers, scoring two game-winning touchdowns and limiting the Knights to just two points, one of which came late when the game was no longer in doubt. The bad news: The offense remained jittery, certainly nothing major, but good enough to not pay much attention to the fact that UCF outgained the Utes by 379 yards to 196 yards.

Highlights centered on a 60-yard pick-6 by Zemaiah Vaughn and Smith Snowden’s 13-yard interception and sprint into the end zone, which increased Utah’s lead to 28-7 in the fourth quarter and nearly restored the Ute resistance familiar and dynamic as in previous years.

As mentioned, it would be an exaggeration to say that Utah’s offense was lively considering the offense only managed 11 first downs, but fifth-string quarterback Luke Bottari actually threw a 15-yard touchdown pass Landen King and followed that up with a two-point conversion pass to Micah Bernard on the way to 111 yards. If that sounds sarcastic and condescending, it is. But such a performance is even more acceptable when it comes to winning. Shazam. The Utes even kicked a few field goals.

Look, at the end of a seven-game losing streak, everything that was positive for the Utes seemed like heavenly miracles, like something important could be about to happen. They would embrace it because, as insignificant as it may be to outsiders, a 5-7 mark felt a lot better to them than 4-8, even if only two of those wins came in Big 12 games.

And so Utah’s 2024 season was punctuated with a win and a Whittingham smile.

The questions that arose from this joyful expression were these: Was it the expression of something greater than a single triumph? Something bigger than a sad season? Was it an exclamation point on a great coaching career?

Whittingham said he will let everyone know as soon as he knows. Everyone knows this much, including the coach himself: Despite everything he did, he didn’t have to walk across the field with a win for the last time in order to be a winner. And maybe that’s what that big, beaming grin was all about.