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Utah has cornered the market on Thursday night season openers, but that will change next year with a trip to BYU

Kyle Whittingham, the state of Utah’s highest-paid public employee, reports to work whenever he’s told to be there. Traditionally, that includes the Thursday evening prior to Labor Day.

That was the case until this week, anyway, when Whittingham suddenly wondered why his Utah football team has staged Thursday games 10 years in a row. During his weekly news conference Monday, Whittingham interrupted his own answer about the Utes' recent history of openers by saying, “I've never really asked the question why we always play on Thursday.”

So he asked the moderator, senior associate athletic director Liz Abel: “Why do we do that?