You can never know how good a coach really is, especially at a school like BYU. Coaches can struggle at one place and do extremely well at others. Why that is no one knows. Head coaches have to deal with assistant coaches who take on a huge part of the responsibility. And the position coaches. All these things play a huge part in player development and success on the field. Some times a handful of players can wreck a team's chemistry. A head coach can only do so much.

We all know BYU isn't a run of the mill school. It's a tough place to be a HC. Is there anyone who disagrees? The coaches have to buy into the university's strengths or they will be gone pretty quickly. Bronco has done nothing if not embraced the university's strengths. To some degree you can compare coaches, but doing so will not tell you which one was "better." It will tell you who succeeded at certain metrics. But the only way to ultimately compare them is to somehow have them coach the exact same players, at the exact same time, playing the exact same teams. It's impossible.

There are certain things beyond Bronco's control: independence. He can try to motivate his players after two straight losses, but they all know at that point what they're playing for.

Honor code and academics. He can try to help kids struggling with academics and honor code, but there's only so much he can do.

Missions. That's the nature of the gospel and the church BYU represents. Should Bronco encourage kids not to go?

However good or bad Bronco is, I don't know. He's not perfect. He's not the greatest coach ever. He's certainly not mediocre or the worst. But he has won the vast majority of the games BYU should win. And he's gone and beaten some teams BYU probably shouldn't have. And he's lost his fair share of heart breakers. I would love to see some changes for the better at BYU football, even at the head coaching position because I think it's possible to have a better coach there who can do a little more than Bronco, but I'm never going to say that Bronco hasn't done a good job, or that he's mediocre. His record deserves more than that.