Aggies not your neighborhood wimps anymore

It wasn't all that close. Friday's BYU-USU football game was never in serious doubt.

So why did it feel like it was?

Because the Aggies were thinking big, that's why.

They haven't done that since John L. Smith had his players punching opponents in the nether regions during pileups.

Now, let's just say this about Aggie football: They're not necessarily your neighborhood wimps anymore.

It's hard to explain, really. Following the Aggies 35-17 loss to BYU at LaVell Edwards Stadium, something odd showed up: a little bit of toughness. They were mad, not defeated. After a dozen players filed into the locker room, they came back out with the others to sing the Aggie fight song to their fans.

They had a pretty good attitude going. How do we know?

They're making opponents work. They're tackling with intent. After at least a decade of closing up shop early, they're finally staying late. They kept on grinding, even after they were hopelessly gone, scoring a touchdown with three seconds left.

You wouldn't know it by their 1-3 record, but this looks like progress.

"Yeah, I do believe that," said USU coach Gary Andersen, when asked if his team believes it can win every game. "I'm sure they do believe they can play against everybody."

This, of course, isn't a certainty. There were times under the last three coaches when they had some temporary flare-ups. It seemed they might finally be starting to put something together. But mostly they just gave it the old college try — if you're a dropout. USU just knew, absolutely knew, it was going to lose. Now?

Not so much.

"We fight hard and we play hard to the very last snap," said Andersen.

Friday, they were one bad lateral from going into the halftime trailing just 14-7. They went into the last quarter trailing the nationally ranked Cougars by fewer than two touchdowns (21-10).

Although the USU-BYU rivalry has lost steam in recent years, it wasn't always this way. BYU has won 20 of the last 21 games, which tends to cast a pall on any rivalry references. But prior to that, USU actually held a 31-23-3 advantage.

Along came the '80s and the Cougs were off and running; the Aggies were merely off.

This game, though, held more interest than many in the series. That's because the Aggies outscored BYU 14-0 in the fourth quarter of a 34-14 game, last year. Many say it was the Cougars' tepid second half that started them toward a semi-slide that resulted in three losses before season's end.

Something about being unable to squash the Aggies in the second half was both disconcerting and revealing.