Right now both internal and external factors are breaking toward's BYU favor. Clearly, there has been an institutional decision that BYU is willing to whatever it can to compete on as high a level as it can. Internal impediments to success seem to melting away. The trends of college football are much better for BYU than the past couple of decades-but a big part of that is BYU's willingness to allow its wealthy boosters help to the extent I believe they are helping.

I don't know what BYU's peak potential is, but I am convinced it is much higher than what I perceived it to be a year ago.

Saying that, a couple of years ago it appeared the world was Utah's oyster. Circumstances can change and change quickly and how BYU is able to react to that, or whether or not BYU can even react to changes in the landscape, go a long way to impacting things. I think the decision to take the gloves off of boosters wrt NLI and other financial contributions has allowed BYU to jump feet first into this brave new world and undo a decade and a half head start Utah had on BYU. It is kind of breathtaking.