​SALT LAKE CITY – He drove to Devon Dampier’s apartment last December, roaming through the twists and turns of the downtown campus at Utah to do the right thing. Face to face. Man to man. This wasn’t the time for Morgan Scalley, Utah’s new coach of mere hours, to beg his starting quarterback to return instead of jumping in the transfer portal. Dampier needed to hear something much more important. “He needed to hear I’m sorry,” Scalley says. On any number of levels. College football live analysis: Utah, UCLA, Texas make huge Week 10 statementsCFP rankings live predictions: UCLA moves up, so who moves down?Sorry Dampier left New Mexico with offensive coordinator Jason Beck and transferred to Utah to play for Kyle Whittingham — and the Whittingham and Utah marriage ended so abruptly. Sorry Whittingham then left for Michigan — and took Beck with him.Sorry Dampier’s first injury-filled season at Utah didn’t work out — especially with all that he gave up. “That’s a crappy thing to go through,” Scalley says now. “I told him I’m sorry this is happening, but I want to make this a fairytale ending.”So when the 101st straight sellout crowd at Rice-Eccles Stadium rushed the field after the first win over bitter rival BYU since 2019, after Dampier threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more, you better believe he was going to enjoy it. There he was, crowd surfing. A long way from that unseasonably cold night in December when he was lost in his apartment after a coaching change, and didn’t know how the future would unfold.Well, here it is: unbeaten Utah, ranked No. 3 in the nation — and maybe higher before the end of the regular season — on a historic run to the College Football Playoff.“A great win, but it’s one game,” Dampier said. “We have to finish out the season. That’s what we agreed to.”They all agreed to it. Coaches, players, staff. Too much had been overlooked and missed in 2025, a team straying from a culture built over the past two-plus decades of doing more with less.So when Scalley arrived at Dampier’s apartment in December, that’s where the foundation of the 2026 season began. He didn’t beg Dampier to stay, didn’t plead for him to not follow Whittingham to Michigan because of Michigan’s quarterback room and the money invested in Bryce Underwood. None of that mattered. Dampier’s investment in the Utah team was everything.Scalley told Damper he had to be a better leader, period. Had to lead by example and mentally and physically push his teammates. “Just because you’re a quarterback doesn’t mean you’re automatically a leader,” Scalley said. “He needed to hear that his teammates see his body language and feed off it.”So he told Dampier they’d get him healthy, and they’d have him prepared and they’d continue with the same offense that had made Utah so dangerous for so many years. The rest was up to him. “Scallley built me into such a great leader,” Damp