because of how unbalanced and overboard many of his biggest and even small critics are (mostly because I think many of them enormously overestimate where BYU is in the college football world), but from where I sit it is obvious that BYU recruiting dipped. In these conversations words like tanked get used and that probably does not reflect reality and polarizes the conversation as recruiting did not tank but it did subtly dip, IMO. While Bronco missed often on high end LDS kids the kids he got in their place were usually not enormously less capable. However, the accumulations of the slightly less capable resulted in teams ever so slightly less good than the top 25 teams, resulted in many teams ever so slightly less good than Utah, fewer kids playing in the NFL etc. It was a dip but not an extreme crater like many would have you think.

Saying that there are also some external circumstances that Bronco dealt with that I think hamstrung him to some extent - lack of conference affiliation and Utah going into the Pac-12 specifically. I am interested in whether or not Kalani is really landing kids that are ever so slightly better than the ones Bronco was landing. Time will tell the tale. Many are optimistic, and there appears to be reason for that optimism, but the reality is we all lie to ourselves and we won't know for a good few more years.