1. I don't think Utah has been as good from 2011-2014 as they were from 2004-2008. Everyone seems overly eager to chalk up all of the drop off in wins to the conference change. I think that only accounts for some of it. The 2004 and 2008 Utah teams would have beaten Washington State. I can't remember the 2005-2007 teams well enough to opine.

2. Part of what feeds into #1 is that people forget that Utah wasn't even dominating the MWC. Over the last 35 years, Utah won a grand total of four conference championships, IIRC (2 shared and 2 outright). Two outright conference championships in 35 years is hardly dominating. But many Utah fans seem to laud the difficulty of the PAC 12 and say things like, "You just can't get away with [negative thing] like you could in the MWC." News flash, you didn't get away with it in the MWC nearly as much as your faulty memory leads you to believe. Utah could play the equivalent of that 27-0 UNLV loss today and all their fans would be saying how much tougher the PAC 12 is. They wouldn't realize that sucky play would still get you a loss against some of the MWC teams (especially if BYU and TCU were still there). That vaunted Washington State team has lost to two MWC teams this year.

3. Utah has lost some of its identity. McBride brought a "nobody thinks you're good enough" motivational style from Arizona that Dick Tomey's Arizona teams had used to get good. I think that motivational style suits Kyle Whittingham better than the Urban Meyer style. Until Utah left the MWC, they could play that to the hilt. They could say they were competing to be the best of the non AQ. Utah trumpeted the success of getting to the PAC 12 so much that they can't go in and tell their players nobody thinks they're good enough. They're basically Arizona or Arizona State, with weather that isn't as appealing to many recruits. I'm not saying they can't ever be good. Just that they lost what made them special and they haven't figured out how to replace it.

4. BYU will always have a unique selling proposition because of the church. If BYU goes to a P5 conference they can sell the top LDS recruits on being about to go to BYU AND play in a P5 conference. BYU won't lose its identity. Does that mean BYU wouldn't ever struggle? Of course not. We struggled in the MWC from 2002 through 2005 or so. The possibility of struggling in a P5 conference would exist.

5. Timing is everything. If BYU were to get an invite for next year, I don't think BYU would struggle like Utah has. That's because BYU will be loaded next year. Utah, on the other hand, was trending down anyway when they went to the PAC 12.