I think that most of us Utah fans were of a similar mentality "if we don't do it now, then we're in trouble"

What we've found is that we didn't do it then, but here we are again. What do I mean? Look at 2011. We were new in the league, coming off of a 10-3 season and returning our Quarterback for his Jr. season, Jordan Wynn. We didn't have to play Oregon or Stanford at all that year, and USC wasn't eligible for the post season. This was the year. What happened?

A tying FG was blocked with time running out against USC at the Coliseum that would have taken the game to OT. We had the momentum... momentum killed in one instant.

What happened next? Against Washington, Wynn went down, Jon Hays stepped up. The guy who was slated to play for the University of Nebraska-OMAHA (not Lincoln) carried us through 9 games. First two games were painful, but he led to team to a victory at Pitt to turn around and get killed at Cal. From there, however, Utah rattled off 4 wins in a row (OSU, Arizona, UCLA and WSU) to then stumble against Colorado. The absolute killer is that if we had beaten Colorado, we would have played in the Pac 12 championship game. Bummer eh?

The next two seasons got worse... and now we are back up (for the moment). We've lost our starting QB in each of the last 4 seasons. I don't know if you've noticed... but that is a tough thing to overcome.

My point is this: Utah is always going to be a tough game in the Pac 12 for any team. That's Whitt. We've had to re-tool and build depth at every position because injuries happen and the 2's and 3's have to be able to fill in without much of a drop off. We're starting to see that happen... FINALLY! All of this said, we'll have more seasons of 4-8 and we'll have seasons of 8-4 (I would be stoked to go 8-4 this season), but we are getting better and it finally feels like we actually belong. I don't think that any Utah fan (sober, that is) believes Utah will be a power... but I think we can be relevant and contend in some years, and I think that is the objective that seems to be realistic.