BYU Football to come

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by Tooelean

Oh Ye of little faith! Many of these same issues faced Coach Edwards when he began. I remember the great Mormon QB Danny White opting for ASU rather than BYU. I remember I think it was Bruce Hurst all everything super athlete that left the state of Utah also for ASU.

You're thinking of Bruce Hardy out of Bingham High School. Bruce Hurst was from St. George who had a terrific career with the Red Sox.

I have to agree with Goatnapper here. The BYU of the 80s that dominated it's conference and made some noise on the national level is gone. The Church is now encouraging kids outside of Utah to attend school in their home states, in part to keep strong, young members in other areas of the country, rather than in Utah County. This doesn't necessarily apply to LDS athletes, but the fact of the matter is that it's now being recognized what non-BYU-fan Latter Day Saints have known since the beginning of time - that one can be a good member of the Church and an outstanding representative of the Church no matter where one plays football. In other words, kids playing for other schools expands that "other branch of missionary work" that Felberg loved to talk about.

[Indy Coug]

What BYU had in the 80s was a superior offensive scheme and superior offensive coaches (Tollner, Scovill and Holmgren) and a college football world that was behind the curve in how to defend it. Those advantages temporarily allowed BYU to overcome talent deficiencies and their defense was still successful because other teams weren't running the spread offense and such that exposed BYU's perennial speed problems.

Those days are gone.

The question is whether BYU can find new schemes (like Texas Tech offense and the 3-3-5 defense) to try to tip the scales in their favor against their opponents and/or find ways to build their talent base.

Given the HC constraints and other cultural oddities of BYU, I seriously doubt they can consistently build and maintain that talent base; certainly enough to replicate the success of the "Golden Years" of 1979 to 1991.

[Archaea]

Consistently winning conference is probably a pipe dream.

However, we haven't even become good yet. Four years and still counting.

It's wait and see on the men's team, as they've lost the games one would predict and won the winnable ones. Will progression be made beyond that?

[Archaea]

after returning from vacation,

We're still second fiddle to Utah in about everything, damn it all.

And,

We're now still worse the USU in basketball.

I don't know how many more downgrades the old sports psyche can take.

[Surfah]

Indy hit the nail on the head. Scheme is what catapulted BYU into the national spotlight. Now that the scheme has been adopted by others with far superior athletes BYU is now chasing those teams like they once chased us.

Personally, I don't think that there is a scheme out there now that can counteract the speed that we see in today's college football game.

However, I do think that with a few talented skill players we can put on a show. We really need to focus our recruiting efforts though to accomplish this.

[myboynoah]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

The Church is now encouraging kids outside of Utah to attend school in their home states, in part to keep strong, young members in other areas of the country, rather than in Utah County.

I've never heard this. Is this an official policy that came out in one of those memos to Bishops and SPs? Or is this based on a kind of communal practice resulting from recognition that there are decreasing opportunities for LDS kids to get into BYU?

I think the Church wants one thing: for LDS college students to receive religious instruction concurrent with secular instruction. This can come through Church-sponsored institutions (BYU, BYU-H, BYU-I) or the LDS Institute program. In the pockets where the Institute program is strong (Utah, Idaho, California, et al), I suspect the Church is happy with students taking advantage of the local universities. However, for those kids outside of these areas (much of the rest of the country and the world), the Church appears to want to provide opportunities via BYU, BYU-H, and BYU-I. IMO, the expansion of BYU-I and calling Kim Clark as President was an answer to the increasing difficulty for LDS kids of getting into BYU and desire to provide a top-rate educational opportunity for those that are being turned away.

Frankly, if easily managed and financially feasible, I suspect the Church would be happy to have BYUs all over the world (Wilkinson tried to start something like this in the 50s and was well on his way until the money ran out). The Institute program is the easier, lower cost alternative.

Hence, Bronco's new recruiting pitch to LDS footballers should incorporate the question, "Why go with the easier, lower-cost alternative?"

8)

[il Padrino Ute]

It's not official policy that I'm aware of, but it is something that I've heard from folks. One of my former mission companions lives in Cincinnati and has a daughter who enrolled at BYU last fall. When she was interviewed by her Bishop, he (a BYU grad himself) apparently tried to get her to consider atending Ohio State, as it was much closer to home and has a rather strong Institute program. That's one example of the trend I've heard for kids to attend school closer to home.

I think it would be a great idea to have BYU campuses all over the country. It would allow kids to have the BYU experience - being enrolled in a school with the majority of the studentbody as members, something that I'd guess is attractive to kids who grow up outside of Utah - yet keep them in school near home where they'll most likely find employment. In Provo, BYU had done a terrific job in producing graduates, but the state of Utah doesn't necessarily benefit from it, as my guess would be that most of the kids go home to work.

[Archaea]

Is the BYU football coach's position a unwinnable position now?

It may be that expectations will always exceed ability to produce, based on reduced draw, lack of money and tightened recruiting restrictions.