It's just not true. For all of Kyle Whittingham's flaws, he's brought excellent discipline to his program. He's had a few issues with players over the years having trouble with the law, but what program out there with or without an honor code hasn't? He's put lots of people in the NFL. He's beaten us soundly a couple of times, but most of his wins have been close. But disciplined teams win close games. Bronco Mendenhall didn't bring that edge to most of our games. Our teams in his later years were constantly penalized for all kinds of crap.

Kyle has certainly benefitted from more resources and money than BYU has in the last 15 years, but he brought a steady hand to the program which won most of the games they should win, and overperformed a few times as well. Importantly, he elevated BYU football because we had to get better in order to compete with our rival. But it does BYU a disservice to say that all these losses came because of luck.

This is the nature of sports. BYU changed the game, and then we stopped improving. L. Edward's program was in decline by the time he stepped away. It'd been 4 years since we'd had a meaningful season. BYU fans were probably pretty obnoxious and feeling entitled to X wins per season. Whittingham's program may be in the state of decline now, too, or it may be a bump in the road. Either way, they are only one season removed from two consecutive conference championships.

Perhaps most notably, BYU's independence combined with losing to Utah has brought a change to BYU fans and our atmosphere. We've become known as an amazing place to visit. Our fans are kind and welcoming. Our atmosphere is second to none in the west. And our on field performance is hopefully changing for the better. I have to give some credit to Kyle Whittingham for forcing our program to get better.

I still don't like him, though.