San Diego • The word of the year just past, the descriptive one Kyle Whittingham used more than any other to characterize his football team is … resilient.
It’s normally a good, fitting word, one the coach wanted to unsheathe again and apply directly on Monday night, after Northwestern defeated Utah, 31-20, in the Holiday Bowl. He could not, though, not on this occasion, not specific to these exact circumstances.
This particular showing required three different words: beaten, shocked and heartbroken. Whittingham added another: “nightmarish.”
In a game that by its very structure and nature, a contest between two hardy-more-than-handsome teams that were built to require that first description out of whoever was going to win it, the Utes could not find a way to hold on, to power through, to be themselves.