I was being pretty harsh, but the point I was trying to make was that we tend to gloss over a lot of crap when we look back at history. Some of the very things that we rail on now were also issues in the past. Looking back, wins against ranked teams like Miami, Penn State, Notre Dame, ASU and Washington were awesome. We tended to get a quality early season win like this every year or two. The problem is that there were also a lot of bad losses mixed in there as well.

In many ways, BYU is a victim of it's own success. The current, exclusionary, structure of the CFB world is largely a product of the controversy caused by BYU's NC. Many other schools used BYU's blueprint for success as a model for their own programs, and the college football landscape evolved. The passing attack was no longer unique and defenses eventually caught up. At a time when BYU really needed to build upon it's success and to keep it's competitive edge by innovating, the plot was lost by a coaching staff who were nearing the end of their illustrious careers. The 90's epitomize this.