The eras are so different. In winning football games, they are dead even.

The money spent on college football in the 70's, 80's and early 90's was not even close to what it is now. If you took the amount BYU is spending on football (and other sports) right now, transported it back to 1990, BYU probably is close to spending as much as Alabama, Texas, Penn State was back then, if not more.

When the CFA contract was broken by the lawsuit, that's when things went crazy.

Also, all the "great" assistants LaVell hired were generally only at BYU for a season or 2. Outside of French, Ramage, Chow, and Schmidt, few people stuck around for many years at all.