This season has been a face-lift for Utah football teams

Dropping from immense success to mediocrity and back again can be a vicious cycle.

Urban Meyer and the upstart Utes went 11-0 last year and the coaching staff was gutted Kyle Whittingham stayed in Salt Lake as the new head coach, offensive coordinator Mike Sanford took over as head coach at UNLV and Meyer ended up at the University of Florida.

Meanwhile, BYU is dropping from its lofty pedestal in the clouds to the normal playing field of ho-hum colleges, Bronco Mendenhall was promoted after Gary Crowton “resigned.” Speculation for his resignation included one-too-many screen passes.

Here in Logan, Brent Guy, who was Arizona State’s defensive coordinator, was brought on to show some signs of winning since it was starting to look like the Aggies had hired the wrong coach. From Montana, former Grizzly and now Wyoming coach Joe Glenn generated a lot of buzz when his Cowboys upset UCLA last season.

With a golden ticket into the Western Athletic Conference, it appears the carousel might be pushing the Aggies into a successful cycle. Yet no USU head coach has had a winning first season since 1973, so it will probably take a few seasons before 11-0 makes its way to Logan. But even talk of a bowl game would be enough for some people – me included.

Guy coached linebackers at Utah State in 1993 when the Aggies won their lone bowl game, Las Vegas Bowl II, arguably the biggest win for Utah State in football. He’s one of many people to have coached at Utah State. Many other coaches have been successful elsewhere, Charlie Weatherbie revived Navy in the past five years, John L. Smith is the current head coach at Michigan State and even Mick Dennehy had won a national title at I-AA Montana before coming to Logan.

Bronco Mendenhall obviously has his horse on the carousel chosen. BYU is clearly in a down cycle from their peak in the mid 80s and their stellar seasons in 1996 and 2001 – but even on the carousel, a lot can happen.

An early season loss to Boston College and a tough contest against TCU, this weekend could signal that what the Cougars need isn’t a quick fix, but a fabulous makeover.

As a BYU student said, if they want to get people to games, forget about “Cougar Town” and pre-game festivities, why don’t they just try winning?

The offensive change didn’t work out with Gary Crowton, so Mendenhall has his hands full trying to recapture the tradition from the defensive side, which isn’t what the Y is known for.