... to whether we have that GREAT team once or twice each decade that gets big wins against top teams at their place, as well as beat the teams at home we're supposed to beat.

My point is that we as fans, and even the coaches, have very little actual control over a lot of this.

When we have our very best team in a decade where offense, defense and special teams are all strong in the same year, a lot of good stuff happened a few years earlier to bring a lot of solid athletes to Provo who were solid enough to succeed not only at football but in the other demands BYU places on them.

I expect that the coaching staff is a work in progress when it comes to recruiting, and that there were some mistakes made in years past that we don't make today, etc. However, this year, we probably made some mistakes that we didn't realize we made, and thus the recruiting method and philosophy gets tweaked when results of recent years show (a) what worked, and (b) what didn't work.

I happen to believe that free agency of these young athletes makes it messy, partly because they are young and get their minds swayed by this or that. Uona is a great example of this, and to a lesser extent, so is Taysom Hill (e.g. BYU wanted Heaps, so Hill looked elsewhere -- who can blame him? -- I was big on Heaps' bandwagon after seeing him throw). A lot of people were big on Demarcus Russell or Ryan Leaf etc.

Even with the messiness that free agency and immaturity causes, we have these amazing success stories that seem to find their way to BYU in spite of obstacles that looked pretty daunting. Who can explain why Van Noy manned up and became a great BYU representative as well as a great football player, but other players face the same challenges and exit stage left?