Ever be competitive while maintaining the church’s standards or if things had changed to make that impossible. There was serious discussion about permanently scaling things back.

Historian David McCullough once said that we make the mistake of looking at the great hinge points and events of history as though the outcomes were inevitable. We assume the decisions made by the key participants were almost irrelevant to the final outcome. The reality, however, is that many times history could have turned out very differently than it actually did.

Now that both programs are on solid footing, it is easy to say the outcomes were inevitable.

Look at how long Nebraska football has wandered in the wilderness now. Imagine, for example, that BYU went through a similar series of unsuccessful coaches and wasted money. It isn’t hard to see the Big XII invite we just got sailing right on by unextended in such a scenario.

Were Cleveland and Mendenhall the only two guys that could have saved us? I don’t think so. But I don’t think it was anywhere near a guarantee that we would succeed on the level we have.