You look for trends, history and all those things that can help you in predicting an outcome. Utah has a very interesting little factoid might make you nervous.

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham doesn’t use a wand or pull rabbits out of his hat.

Whittingham does, however, have a practice model in place to prepare the Utes for games with extra preparation time. Since October of 2007, they’ve won 13 straight contests when given more than a week to size up the opposition. The streak includes three bowl victories and a pair of season openers.

“I don’t believe it’s any magic in the practice plan,” he said. “I think it’s the way our players go about it.”

Of course, after pausing to think about the 13-0 mark, that is a little skewed, to not count the season opening loss to Oregon State and another loss to Air Force with more than a week to prepare that followed. That 13-0 mark also includes a game played 8 days later — technically more than a week, but barely seems to count in my view.

Still, Whittingham took over the same year as Coach Wannstedt, so it seems fair to look at the full length of his tenure to see how he did with 8 days or more to prepare. It is still a rather impressive 20-5 record. 2-0 in season openers at home, 1-2 for season openers on the road.

Just for fun I made the length to 9 or more days and it isn’t that significant a drop-off. Utah was 18-5.

Coach Wannstedt in that same period is a less sterling 10-14. Make the lay-off 9 days or more and it is 8-11. Even in the last couple of years it is only 6-4 (4-4 for 9 days or more).

So much of this seems to bear out some pre-conceived notions. Utah’s Kyle Bill Whittingham is considered one of the best young coaching minds. Coach Wannstedt, not so much.

Except, this is completely misleading. Now I think Whittingham is a good coach, but this stat is useless. Yes, he is 5-0 in bowl games. That’s impressive, and we all know about the win over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

Guess how many of the 20 regular season games in the sample size were played against teams that were bowl eligible? Four. UCLA and Wyoming (6-6) in 2006 and Air Force and Oregon State in 2007. Guess what? All of those games were losses.

So, not including the 5 bowl victories, Utah and Whittingham are  0-4 in regular games against teams that finished with a .500 or better record. Outside of the bowl games the Utes have not won a game against a team that finished .500 or better in the regular season with more than a week to prepare.

(Not that Pitt and Coach Wannstedt should do much bragging. 1-1 in bowl games. Against teams that finished .500 or better in regular season, Pitt has been a less than outstanding 4-12 (3-3 in the last two years) with extra prep time.)

I’m betting the Utah SID put out there, and we can expect to hear mentioned next Thursday night. Just remember, it is completely useless.