If he wasn't on the field, never went to the press conference, or put out any other comments on the penalty, and Whitt only referenced the call as one of many frustrations from the game in his postgame, would we have seen any discussion of the call by national media types? Would the Ute fanbase have churned up as much vitriol on social media, etc. as it did?

Hard to say, but I feel like the overall firestorm would have been far, far quieter and fairly normal if Harlan had just played the AD role and Whitt didn't double down on it.