The State of BYU Football

For the state of Utah, the BYU vs. Utah football game is one of the most important days of the year. Growing up in Salt Lake I looked forward to it every year. The week of the game, schools had activities where students dressed in their team’s colors, and everybody had watch parties for the game. It’s basically a holiday in Utah.

But recently, the game has become less of an event, and more of a foregone conclusion. Utah fans have pre-typed tweets ready to mock their counterparts, while the Cougar faithful have their 1984 arguments in their back pocket, saved for occasions just like a Utah loss, (and really any other occasion you can possibly think of). While we’re all well aware that Ty Detmer won the Heisman Trophy in 1990, that doesn’t change the fact that in 2018 BYU is not a comparable football program to Utah.

The most glaring indicator of Utah’s recent outperformance of BYU is that BYU hasn’t beaten Utah since 2009. A fellow named Max Hall was commanding the offense back then in Provo, which will tell you how long ago that was. Utah has currently won seven straight in the series, which means almost two whole recruiting classes have come in and out of Provo without beating Utah. Some BYU fans will tell you that those losses were really close, and the refs were terrible, and Utah’s gotten lucky, but no one gets lucky in football for nearly 10 years straight. While most of the games have been competitive, that’s often more of a case of Utah not playing their best. Plus, it’s just always a really weirdly played game. But, let’s not let the fact that they’ve been close distract us from the fact that BYU hasn’t beaten Utah since I was a junior in high school.

The seven straight streak is low hanging fruit, so let’s dive into some deeper numbers. The first thing any college coach will say when asked about the most important factor for a successful program is recruiting. So for your viewing pleasure I’ve compiled the recruiting class rankings for both programs since 2011, as well as the average class rank.

2018: Utah 34, BYU 77. 2017: Utah 33, BYU 66. 2016: Utah 37, BYU 49. 2015: Utah 45, BYU 65.

2014 Utah 66, BYU 64. 2013 Utah 47, BYU 66. 2012 Utah 38, BYU 71. 2011 Utah 38, BYU 69.

Average: Utah 42, BYU 66.

That is not close, at all. Utah and BYU have same average gap in recruiting rankings as Oklahoma and Maryland have had the last 5 years, b there are some really good players that come to Provo. BYU beat out USC for defensive back Troy Warner (it helped that Troy’s brother Fred was a BYU standout at the time.) Safety Chaz Ah You had offers from Notre Dame, Stanford, UCLA, Washington, Michigan, and Utah but he committed to the Cougars. Incoming freshman Gunner Romney led the entire state of Arizona in receiving in 2016, and was arguably the best player on a Chandler team that won back to back state titles. He chose BYU over Utah, Boise State, and Arizona State.

But having one or two highly rated players in every class isn’t good enough to compete nationally, or at this point locally. I’m not saying Utah is recruiting like USC, but to say there isn’t a talent gap at this point is simply disregarding reality.

This discrepancy in recruiting is also apparent every April at the NFL draft, not just in the Fall during the season. Since the 2012 NFL draft, the first draft following a season of Utah in the PAC 12 and BYU as an independent, Utah has had nineteen players drafted. In that same time span BYU has had only five players drafted. So Utah has essentially had four times more players drafted than BYU. Not including this year’s rookie class, Utah has twenty-nine players on listed NFL rosters. BYU has seventeen, which is honestly a lot more than I thought they were going to have. It’s still only about half of what Utah has though.

Even with the better recruiting classes that Utah is bringing in, a lot of the players that they have getting drafted in the NFL weren’t four or five star prospects. Many are either local kids or players from Southern California or Texas that the Utah coaches developed into NFL caliber players. Despite all of BYU’s limitations with recruiting, there is no reason that they can’t produce more NFL players than what they’ve been cranking out recently. Because of the higher rated recruiting classes, the fact that Utah is having more players drafted than BYU isn’t shocking, but the gap definitely should not be as big as it is.

BYU’s best alumni in the NFL is Ezekiel Ansah, who when healthy is a top 10 pass rusher in the league. Other than that though we’re looking at either Kyle Van Noy or Daniel Sorensen as their second best player. Jamaal Williams had a solid rookie year, and the Saints apparently love Taysom Hill. Not to get sidetracked, but there is nothing in the entire world that will convince me Taysom Hill can be a successful starting NFL quarterback. Anyways, there are a few players who are really key contributors for their respective teams, but there aren’t any stars or All-Pro caliber players. Besides those few guys, every other former cougar is just a bunch of dudes on practice squads or guys I forgot even existed, yet alone played for BYU.

Utah’s best player currently in the NFL is easily Eric Weddle, who I think is the second best safety in the league, behind Earl Thomas from Texas. But after Weddle they have Star Lotulelei, Alex Smith (say what you want, he’s at worst a top 15 QB in the NFL,) Marcus Williams, and Eric Rowe. All of those players were major pieces of playoff teams. Utah’s twenty-nine guys in the NFL are for the most part contributing to their NFL teams on Sundays, not on Wednesdays with the practice squad.

What I think is the biggest sign of trouble for BYU however is the fact that guys like Chase Hansen and Britain Covey are leaving Utah County to play for Kyle Whittingham in the PAC 12. Hansen and Covey were both State Champion quarterbacks at Lone Peak and Timpview respectively. Both athletes are LDS, and have strong family ties to BYU. This is the target demographic for BYU recruits, but Utah got both players, and they’re both killing it.

Both schools recruited Hansen with the possibility of him playing quarterback, but he was never going to be a quarterback at Utah. From everything coming out of Provo it sounds like Hansen would have at least gotten a shot at playing QB if it meant that they could get him on the roster. He would have played behind Taysom Hill and Tanner Mangum, and probably switched at some point anyways. Despite the better chance to play quarterback, a position he won a state title at, at a school closer to home with more family ties, Hansen still choose Utah. The Utes being in the PAC 12 were a big reason part of that.

Covey’s situation was a little different because no school recruited him to be a quarterback, everyone saw him as a receiver. Covey’s recruitment came down to Utah, BYU, Utah State, and Harvard, and then just Utah and BYU. Covey said that he chose Utah because they were the first to recruit him and he felt more comfortable with the program because he was more familiar with it. So to paraphrase: Covey, who went to Timpview High, which is essentially BYU Junior College and about 4 minutes from campus, and grew up a BYU fan, felt more comfortable with Utah, and Utah noticed him before BYU did.

That isn’t acceptable for BYU. Not only did both those players sign with Utah, but they have both successfully transitioned from All-State quarterback to All-PAC 12 skill position players. Both cited Utah joining the PAC 12 as at least part of the reason that they left Utah County for Salt Lake City. Hansen and Covey are just two players, and don’t make or break either program. But their recruitment represents a much larger problem for BYU. Every November Utah is playing meaningful conference games against programs like Oregon, USC, Stanford and others. BYU is playing meaningless games against programs like Umass, Utah State, and UNLV.

As a BYU fan and alumni it’s sincerely hard to be excited for BYU football come October, yet alone November. By then the Cougars have either clinched their bid to the Las Vegas Bowl, or lost enough to even qualify for bowl eligibility. Games early in the year against top national programs like Texas, LSU, and Michigan are fun, but it’s still hard to get up for a game that is meaningless outside of national attention. Rivalry games will always be meaningful no matter what the state of the program is, but the Utah game has simply become a nightmare. Honestly as a fan the Boise State game was the only game all year that’d I’d circle as a legitimate, meaningful game. (Utah State and BYU aren’t rivals, don’t @ me.)

During my four years as a BYU student I only missed two BYU home football games. I waited in line early, stayed the whole game, day or night, rain or snow. But the two games I did miss were because BYU was playing Georgia Central or something and Utah was playing #4 Washington or #15 Arizona with a chance at the PAC 12 South. Stop telling me that Utah’s never even won their division, it’s so much better to play for something in November, even if you lose, than to just be on the field because the calendar says you have a game against Hawaii that day. It’s more meaningful for the team, more enjoyable for the fanbase, and 100% more impactful for a recruit.  

All that being said, going back to the Mountain West for football is not the answer. A quick fix would be trying to join the American Athletic Conference, still a group of 5 conference, but much better quality of programs than the Mountain West. Also playing in the AAC would allow BYU to play road games around the country in recruiting hotbeds such as Dallas and Southern Florida, while playing in the Mountain West would allow them to play in Reno and Laramie.

The real answer though isn’t going to come until another major conference realignment. Every summer when we’ve run out of actual football topics to talk about the subject always seems to switch to conference realignment. For a few year the hope was always that BYU would be invited to join the BIG XII in some capacity. Since that is out of the picture now, BYU’s best plan is to remain an attractive option throughout independence so that whenever the next major realignment happens, they’ll be included.

The most important thing for BYU to do to improve their odds of joining the PAC 16 or BIG XVIII or whatever the conferences end up being is actually winning more of their games against Power 5 opponents. In 2017 BYU went 0-4 against Power 5 schools, and since 2011 BYU is 13-22 against Power 5 schools, a .371 win percentage. Their record could, and really should, be at least closer to .500 than what it is. But it’s not, and even .500 doesn’t exactly scream “we want Bama!”

Bottom line is that BYU football is not where it can or should be as a program. It is unrealistic for BYU fans to expect to honestly compete for a national championship. To be fair to BYU fans though, without a conference championship to play for after one loss in September what’s the point of the rest of the season? I believe the current ceiling for BYU football is what Bronco Mendenhall did during the John Beck and Max Hall days. Bronco consistently had 10 win seasons, this isn’t relevant now but multiple conference titles, and most importantly beat Utah at least some of the time. For a mid major with no conference championship to play for, not a great record of putting talent into the NFL recently, AND the honor code and other factors that every other school simply just doesn’t have to deal with, even averaging nine-ish wins a year, with a couple ten win seasons sprinkled in there would be absolutely incredible for BYU as a football program.

- By Jake Cowden