While not an NCAA sport, administration and the rugby team had a very good relationship, they even helped notable players get accepted into the university who otherwise probably wouldn't have been accepted. Many of those players (names not included publicly for obvious reasons) didn't graduate.

Two key events happened in rather quick succession. Firstly, Kimball Kjar and who had been the long time backs / attack coach left to go found the Utah Warriors as one of the original MLR franchises. The departure of Kimball with one other key individual (name withheld) were felt especially as there was a scandal within the program. (Both individuals had played key rolls in forming and maintaining healthy relationships with admin). This departure, felt both tactically within the team, and administratively as well, was felt more acutely when Cal Berkeley / the Varsity Cup found two rules violations from the BYU rugby program, one incredibly minor, one well less so.

The first rules violation had to deal with a player, first generation college student (name withheld) , who enrolled at a small school to play football in the Pacific Northwest on scholarship. Deciding after a few weeks that it wasn't the right situation, he quit going to class, but did not officially withdraw from the school. Therefore his clock of eligibility started. He ended up playing a prominent position in a few of the BYU national championship teams, and wouldn’t have been able to play, had his clock started when he originally enrolled to play football. The second rules violation also had to deal with player eligibility, one had been a practice squad player for an NFL franchise, got cut and came back to BYU. (see link 1)

Refusing to admit fault in either of the situations (2) BYU withdrew from the Varsity Cup, killing the nations only true rivalry and real competitive match per year. The remaining coaches relationship with the university began to strain. With increasingly limited access to facilities like the IPF, weight rooms, even south field, the staff decided to move to UVU. That move only lasted a few years, before Smyth went to Southern Virginia for a short time.

With a fractured relationship between the team and administration, Steve has been trying to re-create that. I think Steve is a good guy, a good coach, a good leader. He's fiery, competitive, a good tactician, but as was mentioned before, his raw talent pool is orders of magnitude less than what Smyth and Co, were pulling from. In all honesty, he is probably doing more with less. I dont know if we will ever see the dominance that was with the rugby team ever again.

(1) https://www.goffrugbyreport.com/news/byu-out-varsity-cup
(2) https://www.deseret.com/2017/2/9/20605872/byu-rugby-no-longer-competing-for-varsity-cup-reports-say-cougars-vacating-2015-title
other articles
(3) https://lawlessrepublic.com/2017/02/08/byu-rugby-stripped-national-championship/