Column: Andersen’s impact on USU football goes farther than the past two seasons

The date was Friday, October 1, 2010. Ten-year-old Jacob sat on his couch ecstatic to watch his beloved Brigham Young Cougars play a football game. Sure, BYU was 1-3 on the season, but there was a reason for optimism: they were playing the Utah State Aggies. 

Not only was Utah State irrelevant in the eyes of ten-year-old Jacob, but they were also virtually non-existent. Nobody in his family had attended Utah State. He had never been to Logan and had never seen a USU game not against BYU. The only thing he knew for sure about the Aggies was that they were no match for his Cougars. But then something unfamiliar happened that day. Utah State won, 31-16. 

Ten-year-old Jacob wrote the game off as a fluke. BYU was just really bad that year, and Utah State got lucky. The thing is, the latter part was not true. Because little did he know, there was a storm brewing in Logan, and the catalyst was an eccentric second-year head coach named Gary Andersen. 

Fast-forward a decade and the storm has subsided. After Matt Wells used the momentum of a 10-2 season in 2018 to leave for Texas Tech, the university tried to maintain that momentum by rehiring Andersen. 

There is no doubt that Andersen was still all about his student-athletes. “Coach A has always been good to us and had our best interests in heart,” said senior defensive lineman Justus Te’i in a Nov. 9 press conference. 

But he was doing the opposite of what he did in his original tenure for the Aggies, he was making the program worse. “If you do some comparisons and look at our program only two years ago around the first of December, we were first or second in the country in scoring offense, top-5 in total offense and were ranked No. 19 in the country,” said athletic director John Hartwell in the press conference. “Not even two years later, those tables have been flipped in the wrong direction.”

And besides new interim head coach Frank Maile, most of Anderen’s former assistants that helped make those early 2010’s teams so successful are long gone. Former offensive coordinator Wells is in Lubbock, and 2012 defensive coordinator Dave Aranda is the head coach at Baylor.

So on November 7, 2020, the university made a change.

“Saturday morning, we decided to make a change in our head coaching position,” said Hartwell. “We just felt like we needed to go in a different direction.” 

While it may be easy to throw stones at Andersen for the way he abruptly left Wisconsin, flamed out at Oregon State or parted ways with Utah State after an 0-3 start, Aggie nation must not be quick to forget his impact on the university.

“His departure should not take away from the body of work that Gary Andersen has done for our program,” Hartwell said. “Just looking back and seeing the way and such a positive way that he flipped our football program, from years of mediocrity at best into being an annual bowl participant…I will forever be indebted to Gary Andersen, as will all of Aggie Nation.”

20-year-old Jacob is certainly indebted to Gary Andersen, It’s not that I credit Andersen and the football team for inspiring me to attend Utah State, that’s silly. But my first positive impressions of the university were based upon watching that Andersen-led football team. 

I recall the opening weekend of college football in 2011, the Aggies went down to Auburn, Alabama to play the defending national champion Auburn Tigers. True freshman quarterback Chuckie Keeton burst onto the scene, completing 21 of his 30 pass attempts for 213 yards. Senior running back Robert Turbin rushed for 78 yards and two touchdowns. Sadly, USU blew that game, giving up a late touchdown, an onside kick, and another touchdown with 38 seconds to go to lose 42-38. But it almost didn’t matter. The Aggies had gone into SEC country and gave a team with a 15-game game winning streak everything they could handle. Andersen’s guys had a moxie to them that hadn’t been there prior to then. 

On September 30, 2011, when the Aggies traveled down to Provo to play BYU, no longer was the Old Wagon Wheel game considered an automatic victory for the Cougars. BYU won, thanks to the heroics of Riley Nelson, and fans were elated, rushing the field in celebration. It was uncanny. This was not the response to beating a 1-3 team from the Western Athletic Conference. It was the response of a school that felt threatened by an up and coming in-state rival. 

USU capped off a 7-6 campaign in 2011 that included the first bowl appearance since 1997. People knew that they would continue progressing in 2012, but after the departure of Turbin and WAC defensive player of the year Bobby Wagner to the NFL, nobody could have predicted what was to come. 

The 2012 Aggie team (which deserves its own story) boasted a defense consisting of current NFL talent of linebacker Kyler Fackrell and cornerback Nevin Lawson, and former NFL linebacker Zach Vigil, all of whom were recruited and developed by Andersen and his staff. That defense would finish the season as the nation’s No. 7 scoring defense, giving up just 15.4 points per game. 

The offense consisted of ever-exciting Keeton — who is third in Aggie history for total offense with 7,621 yards (despite two season-ending injuries) — former NFL running back Kerwynn Willimas, NFL lineman Tyler Larsen, and NFL receiver JoJo Natson, all of whom were recruited and/or developed by Andersen and his staff. 

That Aggie team finished 11-2 (tied for the best record in school history) and won the WAC championship. The season included two epic games that will long be remembered by the Utah State faithful. 

This first of which was the home overtime victory over the Utah Utes, knocking them off their BCS pedestal. Utah head coach Kyle Winningham said after the game, “they outcoached us on both sides of the ball.” 

In a recent video by Utah State athletics, Keeton referred to the atmosphere in then Romney Stadium that night as, “the craziest I’ve ever seen it.”

.@CoachKeeton on the electricity of the 2012 Utah game.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow night at 7:00 PM on the Utah State Athletics Facebook page for the full game broadcast! We will also have live play breakdowns from Chuckie and Kerwynn right here on Twitter!#AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/FHSe8oXzL4

— USU Football (@USUFootball) June 17, 2020

The other game was a 48-41 win on the road over then No.19 ranked Louisiana Tech, also in overtime, which won the Aggies the conference title. 

Tony Jones of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote after the game, “Gary Andersen tried valiantly to check his emotions but was unsuccessful as the tears started to flow. Choked with emotion, the man who took Utah State football from depression to prominence simply walked away.”

On December 21, 2012, Andersen was announced as the head coach of Wisconsin, ending his first stint as coach of USU and cementing his legacy as an Aggie coach. 

Andersen built a positive culture at Utah State, and expectation for winning, and he did it at the best possible time. If the Aggies had not been competitive during the time of the conference realignment carousel that we witnessed in the early 2010s, they may have been left behind. 

Utah State play-by-play man Scott Garrard said it best, tweeting on November 7th: 

“Aggie fans should shudder at the thought of where the athletic program would be right now without Gary Andersen. Look at New Mexico State or U of Idaho. That could have been USU had Gary not turned things around a decade ago. His lasting impact should always be acknowledged.”

Aggie fans should shudder at the thought of where the athletic program would be right now without Gary Andersen.

Look at New Mexico State or U of Idaho. That could have been USU had Gary not turned things around a decade ago

His lasting impact should always be acknowledged

— Scott Garrard (@ScottyGZone) November 7, 2020

Instead of being stuck in the disenfranchised WAC, grasping at straws, and struggling to field an FBS quality football team, the Aggies were invited to the Mountain West conference in 2012, which they joined in 2013. 

Andersen’s success immensely grew the Utah State brand, improving the school’s public image towards prospective students (like me) and other people in Utah. The winning (and moving to the Mountain West) also benefited the school financially. 

In the 2009-10 fiscal year (Andersen’s first season as USU head football coach,) the Utah State athletic department earned $19,201,898.00 of revenue. In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the department earned $34,933,622 in revenue, an 81.9 percent increase of revenue in just eight years.

But as we face the present day, new challenges arise. Utah State football has had a drop-off in performance level. They are not in a position to be competing for conference championships. 

The Mountain West is continually improving as a league, with the talent being recruited and facilities being built. And with a one-time-transfer rule likely to be passed in January, changes to what it means to be a “student-athlete” on the horizon, and rumors of more conference realignment, it is paramount that Utah State can put a winning product on the field as soon as possible. 

Hartwell understands this, saying in a November 7 press release, “The continued success and development of Aggie football is a priority and we want to make sure we are regular contenders for the Mountain West Championship.”

Sure, Utah State is also a basketball school. Nothing gets the community more excited than a big-time game at the Spectrum on a frigid winter evening, and with Craig Smith at the helm, the program is in a good spot. But from the eyes of outsiders, the football team is what people see. That is where the money is, that is what moves the needle. 

Andersen established that brand of quality football at Utah State, and for that, he should be admired. Now, it is somebody else’s responsibility to build upon that brand into the 2020s.

@jacobnielson12

—sports@usustatesman.com