Alcohol pulled at him as his football coaching career spiraled, yet Whitten believed he had it under control. His wife, Dana, sometimes encouraged him to get help. That just caused an argument.
"At that point, I wasn't going to hear anybody really," Whitten said. But alcohol consumed more and more of his life. Whitten remembers drinking almost a case of beer a day at the peak of his addiction, always thinking about when he could get his next taste.
Fired in 2009 after five unsuccessful years as Sam Houston's head coach, he bounced from stop to stop, his reliance on alcohol trailing him the entire way: Offensive coordinator at Lamar, head coach at a Texas high school and UTEP as receivers coach. Then Whitten got a call from an old friend, Tarleton State athletic director Lonn Reisman. It had been 20 years since Reisman hired a 31-year-old Whitten to be Tarleton State's head coach in 1996.
Reisman hired him again four years later. The first time he took over the Texans, Whitten stabilized the program, which was in its Division II infancy. The second time at Tarleton State, Whitten transformed Tarleton State into a winner, winning the program's first Lone Star Conference championship and making the Division II playoffs twice from 2000-04.
Reaching out to Whitten a third time in the fall of 2015 carried considerable risk for Reisman. Even beyond the unconventional move to hire the same coach who'd already left the school twice, Reisman knew about Whitten's reliance on alcohol. He asked Whitten about it on the phone.
Reisman wanted to hire someone he trusted. Tarleton State represented the happiest years of his coaching life. He needed to meet with Whitten in person.
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