Utah has an excellent coach. A BYU guy who has lots of experience- especially against BYU.
Matt Wells may be an okay coach, but his first several years in Logan, he didn’t do much. The TTU job was a surprise. And nobody will be surprised if he’s not there in four years. Who knows with G Anderson. Safe to say he’s not a P5 caliber head coach.
UTAH is known and respected as a solid program by all.
Nobody outside of Scotty G gives a crap about USU in the local, national, international or interstellar media. They move no needle. Anywhere.
Utah has been an excellent defensive machine for decades. The offense is up and down.
USU has had two good QB’s, a few good linebackers and one solid stable of receivers in 20 years.
UTAH has all the money, prestige, and clout of a P5.
USU joined a semi-defunct conference BYU was eager to leave.
UTAH is In a quickly growing metropolitan area.
USU is 90 minutes from an airport, and is known for cows and frost.
And so on and so on...
Losing to Utah sucks. But given the current rules and structure of D1 football, not to mention the reality of financial considerations, UTAH has many advantages over BYU. USU should have none. None. And yet, USU has taken 3 of the last 5- including 2 of 3 in Provo.
I think the slide in losing semi regularly to teams like USU is more damaging than losing to teams with every conceivable advantage. BYU has GOT to stop losing to teams like USU if they are ever going to build the program as an INDY. Beat all the beatable teams first, then knock off a few giants is what the BYU program was built on.