BYU's 1984 team probably wasn't even the best BYU team ever. But things lined up in a year when every established team was either consistently terrible or blew a bewildering game. SOMEONE had to be the champ and BYU was probably the best choice, given all the chaos elsewhere.

And if there had been the same degree of chaos in 2004 or 2008, Utah might have been a similar beneficiary. Because those teams were legitimately good and likely had as impressive a year as 1984 BYU did. But the circumstances weren't the same, and so BYU got a national championship and Utah settled for being the BCS buster. So I can agree that it's potentially just as impressive.

But it's also not a championship. Regardless of how you get there or what chaos had to unfold around you for it to happen, once you get the championship, it's yours forever and it's inherently more meaningful than busting into the BCS.

The biggest knock on the 1984 title isn't the circumstances, but the time elapsed. Growing up as a Utah fan in the 90s, it always seemed absurd when people talked about Utah's basketball national championship or West Point being a dominant football team since those were 45 years ago. Now as a BYU fan, it's hard for me to make a big deal out of something that happened when I was two months old without feeling like I'm living in the past. The key is to occasionally keep having special season, which we've managed to do about once a decade since then (1996, 2001, and 2020 with head nods to 06 and 07 which were great seasons but didn't have the same excitement potential based on when the losses happend)