Bronco inherited... a 5-6 team. Saying the cupboard was full for one and empty for the other seems moronic in light of this information.

Let's deal in some facts for a moment:
Bronco has played better competition than Lavell did. This is even more true in looking just at Lavell's 1st 10 years
Lavell accomplished more in terms of awards and wins in his first 10 years.
Lavell brought with him and helped create the West Coast Offense that innovated football. This is certainly a credit to Lavell.
Bronco is tasked with much more in terms of restrictions from an academic standpoint as well as the enforcement of the honor code. He does an absolutely brilliant job with this.
Bronco is now tasked with playing and recruiting against a "better Utah". Utah was down for the majority of Lavell's career. A lot of that credit goes to him for taking all of the good recruits in Utah. Still, he didn't have to deal with Utah in a P-5 conference.
Lavell had the advantage in getting Polynesians to play for him. Virtually no one else out there was going after these recruits which played a HUGE part in Lavell's success.

I don't think anyone is calling Bronco a better coach than Lavell. I don't even think Bronco himself would say that or even think it. That being said, Bronco's record in his first 10 years is extremely good-even more so given all of the differences in college football today.