Dave Rose has a similar winning percentage to Bronco Mendenhall. His teams have played horrendous defense of late. They always lose several games to weak sauce teams they should have beaten (hence, they've only ended up second once and first never in the WCC---the WCC for mercy's sake!). He hires unknown and unproved assistants (Terry Nashif? He has less experience than Nick Howell. Tim Lacomb had no experience outside of BYU. Mark Pope is so great because he DID have outside coaching experience … for one year at Wake Forest---where's Dave Rose's coaching "tree"?). He doesn't put players into the NBA nearly as well as Bronco Mendenhall. All Rose has to show is a lottery pick bust (ouch, can't believe I admitted that) and an undrafted center trying to make the roster. Mendenhall has had players catching passes in super bowls and being named to all rookie teams. They play an inferior schedule compared to the P5 schools. And they almost never do anything special in the postseason except for one trip to the Sweet Sixteen. They lose to Utah and Utah State.

And let's look at that Sweet 16 season. There is no doubt that team was not going to sniff the Sweet 16 without Jimmer. They got there because of a special player. And if Bronco had his special player this year (Taysom) they'd still be undefeated, or maybe 1 loss. Imagine BYU basketball last year if KC had gone out early in the season rather than at the end---would they have even made the postseason?

Now, I'm actually strongly on the Dave Rose bandwagon, I think he's a tremendous coach and good for BYU. I'm also not completely satisfied with Bronco's performance as a coach, and I think he needs to do better. But I think he's a much better coach than CB and fans seem to give him credit for. When you compare him with Dave Rose, who is adored by fans, they are pretty much the same thing. I think there are two reasons, though, why fans don't like Bronco if they really dig deep and admit it:

1) He doesn't say the things that media and fans want to hear.
My reaction to this is, who cares? Do we really care that our coach love us? Does it matter how well they handle the media … really? Shouldn't it matter more what players think? And players seem to really like Bronco.

2) He is too churchy in how he promotes BYU football.
Well, we ARE BYU folks. If you don't like a little religion mixed in, you might be cheering for the wrong school. This one really surprises me. We should be supportive of a team that openly strives for the kinds of principles that Bronco talked about in the ESPN documentary, and be happy to see the football players touching people's lives through firesides and trips to the prison.

I think the critics need to admit that if they don't like Bronco, they should not like Rose for the same reasons. Unless your reasons for not liking Bronco are because of off-field irrelevant issues.