They had better teams, or at least crazy impressive defenses over the last several years on a bigger stage while BYU was struggling to try and stay relevant while being massively inconsistent in that same time frame.

Now that BYU is showing some consistency and emerging as a team with a potentially high ceiling this year on a big stage as well, of course he's going to get excited and passionate about BYU again.

He's also has a lot of pride for the state of Utah, so when any team from Utah is doing really well, he gets excited about them.