The origin story of Utah's 'RSNB' culture

Amid a sea of red-clad fans, Morgan Scalley practically floated across the Rice-Eccles Stadium field, posing for selfies and shaking hands as he made his way back to the locker room after the biggest win of his coaching career thus far.

After he finally got through the jubilant crowd, he paused to clap along to the school’s fight song, “Utah Man,” savoring the moment before entering the locker room to address his team.

Following a 28-20 win over No. 9 BYU, Utah is 9-0 and ranked No. 2 in the nation. The Utes sit atop the Big 12 standings and are just two wins away from punching their ticket to the Big 12 championship game in the final year of the event.

Moreover, Utah is tantalizingly close to its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance, though there’s still a lot of business to take care of before the Utes can punch thier

Who saw it coming?

Even the most optimistic Utah fan couldn’t have dreamed of this start.

A transition to the coach in waiting

After an 11-2 season in 2025 — a return to form for the Utes after an injury-plagued 2024 campaign — University of Utah leadership had a decision to make, with the future of the football program hinging on it.

Kyle Whittingham, the program’s winningest coach, had floated the idea of retirement in recent years, but when the season neared its conclusion and a decision was needed, he had always chosen to keep coaching.

Perhaps reinvigorated by the success of the 2025 team, which featured an exciting offense called by Jason Beck and quarterbacked by Devon Dampier, Whittingham informed Utah that he did not intend to retire following the season. His contract with the university went through the 2027 campaign, and his agent asked for a $1.6 million raise in both years that would have increased Whittingham’s total compensation to $9 million in 2026 and $9.6 million in 2027.

Scalley, Whittingham’s defensive coordinator, had been named as coach in waiting years prior. He had patiently waited his turn as Whittingham decided to come back or not each year, but at some point, would Scalley leave to become a head coach elsewhere?

On one hand, Utah had Whittingham, the head coach who had taken the baton from Urban Meyer and built the program into a two-time Power Five conference champion, willing to come back.

On the other, the younger, energetic Scalley seemed like a good bet to continue Utah’s success and perhaps elevate the program, though there’s no such thing as a sure thing in the coaching world.

At a crossroads, Utah essentially picked Scalley, offering Whittingham a one-year contract that would have increased his salary for 2026 to $8 million, but ceded “complete decision-making authority over all football recruiting, roster management, and staffing matters that impact the program beyond the 2026 football season” to Scalley.

Whittingham did not agree to that and “stepped down,” with his agent negotiating a $13.5 million transition bonus that replaced previous language in the contract that said Whittingham would serve as “special assistant to the athletics director” following retirement for two years at a salary of $3.45 million per year.

What nobody in Utah’s athletic department saw coming was that the head coaching job at Michigan would open up. The Wolverines chose the clean-cut Whittingham, who would surely run a program free from scandals that had plagued Michigan’s program in recent years.

The surprising part wasn’t that Michigan wanted the successful Whittingham. It was that the 66-year-old, after spending 32 seasons total with Utah (21 as head coach), decided to move 1,500 miles away and start over at a new program.

As expected, Whittingham’s only loyalty was to his new job, and he took Beck, quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer Jr., wide receivers coach Micah Simon, offensive line coach Jim Harding, tight ends coach Freddie Whittingham and defensive ends coach Lewis Powell to Ann Arbor, alongside players Smith Snowden, JJ Buchanan, Jonah Lea’ea, John Henry Daley and Salesi Moa.

It was hardly the smooth transition originally planned by Utah when it concocted the coach-in-waiting plan.

Laying out his vision

The odds were certainly stacked against Scalley in his first year.

Utah’s new head coach had to hire a mostly new staff and replace some important players, but he had prepared for this moment his entire career.

As he rose up the coaching ranks, Scalley jotted down names of impressive coaches he had come across in his travels, including Utah State offensive coordinator Kevin McGiven.

Scalley’s preparation and attention to detail ensured he was able to assemble a good staff, even as Whittingham shook things up by convincing many of his longtime coaches to join him in Ann Arbor.

“I’m a preparer. I want to make sure that I’m not caught off guard. I want to make sure that I’ve got contingency plans,” Scalley told the Deseret News in May. “So, throughout my years coaching, whether it’s camps, out on the road recruiting, scouting, watching film of other opponents, I just kept track of people I thought that did a great job, who I thought were very good coaches.”

Scalley made it a priority to keep some of Utah’s best players, including quarterback Devon Dampier, running back Wayshawn Parker, safety Rabbit Evans and linebacker Johnathan Hall.

As Dampier dealt with the loss of Whittingham and Beck, the latter of whom was the offensive coordinator he came to Utah with from New Mexico, Scalley visited the quarterback with a simple message.

“I just went to tell him, ‘Brother, first, I’m sorry. Sorry this is happening. I’m sorry this has happened, but I want to make this a fairy tale ending for you,” Scalley said. “I was part of the reason that you came here and here’s why. Here’s why I believe in you and here’s what we’re going to do going forward.’”

“He believed and bought into that vision.”

As he prepared for his first official game as head coach in the Las Vegas Bowl versus Nebraska last December, Scalley was essentially re-recruiting his entire roster and selling them on his vision for the team and the culture he was about to implement.

It worked, as fewer players than expected followed Whittingham to Michigan. The biggest losses were sack leader Daley and promising receiver JJ Buchanan, but it was far from the carnage that could have happened.

Scalley had a clear path forward for the program, and it resonated with the players.

The origin of the ‘RSNB’ culture

In 2017, a year after becoming Utah’s defensive coordinator, Scalley sat down and to a keynote address given by the late Tim Kight, a leadership expert that founded leadership development training company Focus 3 and whom had also worked with former Ute coach Urban Meyer as Ohio State’s “leadership consultant.”

“Unbelievable keynote address just filled with so much meat about culture, about leadership,” Scalley recalled this week.

Kight’s address hit Scalley like a bolt of lightning. He listened to it four times, taking notes with each listen. He then sent it to all of the defensive assistants and had them study it.

In the keynote address, Kight outlined many of the concepts that are now integral to Scalley’s culture. Over the past nine months, Scalley has verbalized these concepts — with his own spin on them — in numerous media availabilities and team meetings.

•  ”If a culture isn’t happening in you, it will not happen through you."
• “Leadership is not authority based on a position you have been given, it is influence based on trust you’ve earned.”
• “Leaders build culture, culture drives behavior and behavior produces results.”
• “Culture is not built by what you proclaim, it is built by what you practice, what you promote and what you permit.”
• “Your business will rise to the standards you set or fall to the level of behavior you tolerate … Your culture is no better than the worst behavior that you tolerate.”
• “Culture is what you believe, how you behave, and the experience that your behavior delivers.”

Back in 2017, after having his coaches listen to Kight’s keynote address, Scalley and his staff spent an entire week defining the behaviors that they wanted from their defensive players.

They landed on a four-letter initialism that has come to define Utah’s overall team culture.

“Relentless, Smart, Nasty Ballhawks.”

“It’s simply teaching skillsets and mindsets of winning football teams and winning men and being on top of it every single day,” Scalley told the Deseret News in May. “It’s not just words on walls, it’s how you behave every single day.”

In essence, Scalley wants each and every player to live up to the culture every single day by their actions — playing and training with relentless effort, being smart not only on the field but in the classroom, film sessions and game preparation, playing with a nasty, physical, aggressive edge and being “ballhawks” by taking the ball away on defense and taking care of it on offense.

Within each of the “RSNB” words are acronyms that define the exact behaviors that Scalley wants out of his team.

“Smart” stands for “situationally intelligent, mentally tough, aware of what you’re putting in your body, rest and recovery, technician.”

“Nasty” stands for “no excuses, attack the problem, starts with me, team-first mentality, ‘yes, sir’ communication.”

As Scalley took over as coach of the entire team, not just the defense, he consulted with his staff to see if he should continue to define the culture through “RSNB” or come up with something different.

The advice from his assistants was unanimous — don’t change a thing.

Really the only thing that had to be tweaked was the definition of ballhawks, which now incorporates the offense by emphasizing keeping the ball when the Utes have it.

During the offseason, Scalley and his staff drilled that RSNB culture into every player’s head, emphasizing the specific behaviors he wanted to see out of his team.

Scalley only wanted players at Utah who were going to live by that culture, which was a key factor in which players the Utes offered in high school recruiting and the transfer portal.

All offseason long, Scalley was extolling the virtues of the program’s “RSNB” culture to anyone who would listen.

“People need to understand culture’s still going to matter. Teams win championships, not individuals. If everyone tries to get their bag, go get yours, it’s tough for teams to win,” Scalley said in May.

During his introductory press conference, Scalley declared that Utah’s goal is to play for a national championship.

At the time, it seemed a little far-fetched. With Utah sitting at 9-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country, it doesn’t anymore.

“The goal now is playing in January, get a national championship,” Scalley said. “We’re going to do it here at the University of Utah. I’ve always believed that.”

Ask anyone around the Utah football program the reason for this team’s success and undefeated record and you’ll get the same answer.

“Culture.”

An unselfish culture

In the age of NIL and revenue sharing, what Scalley has done in instilling a team-first and unselfish mindset across Utah’s entire roster is no easy feat.

Certain players are making more money — in some cases, a lot more — than others, and individual opportunity, playing time and offensive touches can make a big monetary difference when it’s time to negotiate another revenue share contract.

“It’s not about me. It’s not about one person. It never will be. It is about these guys. It is about the players. Players win championships, teams win championships, not individuals.”

—  Utah coach Morgan Scalley

But Scalley has created an unselfish culture full of players who are happy to see their teammates succeed.

The biggest example is the play of Utah’s pass-catchers this season. Braden Pegan is the team’s WR1, but Noah Bennee, Ricky Johnson, Creed Whittemore and Hunter Andrews have each led the Utes in receiving in at least one game.

The unselfish mentality extends to the running backs. When Wayshawn Parker isn’t getting the ball, he’s one of the best blocking backs in college football.

“How I sacrifice my body is putting my body out there on the line for Dev and the receivers … They catch a ball downfield and they break it loose, I want to be that touchdown-saving block,” Parker said.

“If Dev is in a pressure for a cool little minute, I want to sit there and block for him, make sure he get that ball off and don’t get sacked.”

Dampier, a potential Heisman Trophy finalist, pushed for backup quarterback Byrd Ficklin to be on the field more, even at the cost of snaps to himself. Especially at the start of the season, the two-quarterback packages worked and contributed to Utah being hard to stop.

“Well, as long as the ‘disease of me’ doesn’t creep in, I think it’s pretty good,” Scalley said. “On the defensive side of the ball, it’s easy because no one is given the responsibility of having the ball. On the offensive side of the ball, either you have the ball or you don’t, and elite teams are OK with that.

“Their wide receivers, they go and block. When I don’t get the ball, I go and block. If I am a star and I’m expected to do certain things and it doesn’t happen, OK, next game.”

‘We’re a team driven by love’

Scalley also leads with a culture of love.

You can feel the passion Utah’s coach has for each of his players, and he means it when he says he wants to develop them into well-rounded men, not just elite players.

“At the end of the day, the majority of them are not going to play in the NFL and they have to have skillsets and mindsets that are transferable to any walk of life,” Scalley said in May.

“If the only thing we teach them here is how to become a better football player, we’re failing them.”

Sometimes leading with love means tough love with his players. It means discipline, and not allowing behavior that runs contrary to the culture he has worked hard to get his players to internalize.

The word “love” is a common refrain when you ask about Utah’s culture, and that has resonated with Utah’s players.

“Man, how strong culture is. How much brotherhood and love can take you. That’s our foundation. That’s the three,” Dampier said about the message that Utah’s October win over Houston sent to the nation.

“We’re a team driven by love and we know that we can support each other. We know we got each other’s backs,” added linebacker Trey Reynolds.

This season, that culture has resulted in a team that plays fast, free and more loose than perhaps any Utah team since the 2004 Utes. While obviously trying to prevent turning the ball over, if it does happen, players have had a short memory and haven’t played tight after giving the ball away.

“Just being able to play fast, play free, our coach has given us the luxury to do that,” Evans said.

Overhauling the program

Scalley has overhauled a lot in Utah’s program since taking over, while still keeping things that worked from Whittingham.

Utah’s new coach changed practice structure, implemented a new roster management strategy that prioritizes production over projection, cleared the way for Utah’s innovative offense under McGiven — whom he’s given full freedom to — and brought in former Baltimore Ravens strength coach Steve Saunders to run the strength and conditioning program.

Led by Saunders and Utah’s sports science team, the Utes have transformed the strength and conditioning program, focusing on making them the best football players they can be, not just the best weightlifters.

Multiple Utes have talked about how they felt like they were in the best shape of their lives this season after shedding fat and gaining muscle, and it’s borne out in how healthy this team has been.

Scalley brought in general manager Joe D’Orazio, whose eye, along with Scalley’s, has proven to be masterful. The pair brought in impact transfers from Group of Six and FCS schools such as Pegan, tight end Noah Bennee, defensive end Ethan Day and defensive tackle Jireh Moe.

The Utes are not likely to ever have the money that schools such as Alabama, Georgia and Oregon have at their disposal. Utah did have a good enough war chest to be able to hang onto Dampier, Ficklin, Parker and get Pegan and others from the portal, but this season has been a test of Scalley’s hypothesis that culture is the ultimate factor.

Money and the talent it attracts matters. A team could have the best culture in the world, but if it doesn’t have talented, difference-making players like Dampier, Parker and others, it’s not going to win a conference championship.

“It’s not about me. It’s not about one person. It never will be. It is about these guys. It is about the players,” Scalley said in his introductory press conference.

“Players win championships, teams win championships, not individuals.”

In Scalley’s eyes, culture can be the differentiator between good programs and elite, championship-contending ones.

“Money matters, but money can get you in trouble. Look at some of the biggest spenders and they lose,” Scalley said in May. “... We won 11 games last year and we’re not paying the most money, so I truly believe that yeah, we’re going to have enough at the University of Utah. Are we going to outspend everyone? No, you don’t have to outspend everyone.”

So far, Scalley’s hypothesis has proven true.

Utah and UCLA — two old Pac-12 teams — stand alone as the nation’s only undefeated teams. There has been bad injury luck for some, but the Utes are ranked higher than teams such as Alabama, Notre Dame, Texas, Miami, Oregon and USC.

‘It’s an everyday deal’

How has Scalley gotten a group of 120 men from all walks of life to completely buy into the “RSNB” culture?

He’s emphasized it every day, has promoted good behavior when he sees it and doesn’t permit behavior contrary to the culture. Scalley holds himself to the same standards as he expects for his players, because if he isn’t living the culture every minute, why would he expect his players to?

“Culture is what you believe. It’s how you behave based on that belief. Your behavior has to show it,” Scalley said.

From star Dampier to walk-ons, each player is held to the same standard.

“It’s what you practice, it’s what you promote and then it’s what you permit. Don’t permit behavior that is counter to your culture,” Scalley said.

“I don’t care if you’re a first-year walk-on freshman or a fifth-year senior that’s about to get drafted. The culture’s the culture. Standard’s the standard. We’ll call that out if we see that it’s behavior counter to your culture.”

But for players to really buy in, he says, they have to see positive results from that commitment. That’s come during the season as Utah has won every game thus far, but long before that, players started seeing payoff during spring ball.

“If I’m asking someone to behave a certain way in the experience, they’re not winning, they’re not seeing results, they’re not feeling like they’re improving or getting better, don’t expect them to stay,” Scalley said.

“Don’t expect them to keep doing the things that you’re asking them to do. So the experience has to be awesome. I have to be seeing myself getting better, improving, feeling better about my performance, my game.”

Each week, Scalley plays “culture clips” that exemplify the behaviors he’s looking for, like Parker’s block that saved a sack, which helps promote and reward players that are living the RSNB culture.

“Why do people leave organizations? They can say, ‘Well, money.’ No, it’s because you don’t feel valued. You don’t feel like what you do matters. So every day, let’s promote the behavior that we’re asking for,” Scalley said.

As No. 2 Utah prepares for another top-25 clash against No. 23 Arizona Saturday, Scalley’s culture will once again be on display as Utah tries to stay undefeated.

“It’s an everyday deal,” Scalley said. “It’s not just words on walls. It’s an everyday deal that you got to hold people accountable to, but also help them understand this is awesome. What you’re doing here, that’s why we’re winning.”