Fact is, Utah's gotten much better as a program since the mid-80s. Even the ardent Ute fans on the board will admit that until the early 90s, Lavell never had much of a Ute football program to face. The university started prioritizing football more in the early 90s, and not coincidentally, that is when Lavell started losing to Utah with regularity (Lavell lost 5 out of 7 to Utah between 1993 and 1999).

I'm all for criticizing Bronco, but do it fairly. Crediting Lavell for dominating Utah (something he definitely stopped doing after 1992) is akin to crediting Bronco for dominating UNLV. If UNLV starts fielding a decent football team 30 years from now and starts beating BYU with regularity, we can't criticize BYU's future coach by saying that "Bronco Mendenhall never lost to UNLV."