Urban Meyer began Utah's climb to prominence

ORLANDO, Fla. — Utah has finished undefeated twice in the last six seasons, with two BCS bowl wins, making it an attractive school for membership into the Pac-10.

The emergence of the Utes has been impressive, and it all began with a man living in Gainesville.

Urban Meyer.

Meyer and the Utes were the original BCS busters when they were invited to play in the Fiesta Bowl following the 2004 season. Without Meyer, would the Utes have enjoyed the same level of success over the last several years? Who knows.

But it is safe to say Meyer deserves a bit of credit for where Utah is today.

When he took over the program in 2003, Utah was in decent shape. The Utes had won their share of conference championships but were largely out of the national spotlight. They had only one 10-win season, back in 1994. That was the only time they were nationally ranked.

The team Meyer inherited went 5-6 in 2002. But Meyer had a history of success at Bowling Green, and he brought his spread offense to the mountains of Utah. Season 1 was a success — 10-2, with a Mountain West conference championship and a win over Southern Miss in the Liberty Bowl.

"With all due respect to the '94 football team and Utah, and there have been some great teams at Utah, I think this will go down as the greatest senior class and one of the top football teams ever in the history of this program," Meyer said at the time. "You won the championship. You won the championship bowl game. And forever they will be remembered for that."

He spoke too soon. That season only proved to be a warm-up act for 2004, when Utah, Meyer and Alex Smith ran roughshod through their schedule, beating opponents by an average of 25.8 points a game. Smith became the first Heisman finalist in Utah history, but even bigger than that — Utah became the first non-automatic-qualifying (AQ) school to make it into a BCS game.

The Utes throttled Pittsburgh 35-7 to win the Fiesta Bowl, essentially serving notice that non-BCS schools could compete, and deserved respect. Since then, non-AQ teams Boise State, Hawaii, TCU and another Utah team have made it into BCS games. Last season, TCU and Boise State made history — the first time two non-AQ teams made it into the BCS in the same year.