That is a factor but I don't think it matters as much as just having raw talent to work with. Look at Stanford. Lose one of the best QBs in school history along with other NFL talent. Whatever, reload and on to another BCS bowl. USC? Down goes their NFL QB and they bring some scrub who nearly beats the #1 team in the country. Granted, those are top Pac12 teams but they just reload and go. I don't see Utah as having the starting talent or the depth of most of the Pac12. Look at Texas A&M going to a new conference and doing well. It's because the talent was comparable.
What really changed when Utah went to the Pac12 anyway? Really nothing but the competition. And now it's gonna take a little time for that to come to fruition. And I'd love to hear any coach say that 2 years of recruiting is plenty of time to turn around a program.
Look, with better coaching Utah maybe makes a bowl this year. But that's it. Give this group to whatever coach you want and they still are not sniffing a BCS bowl this year.
Some years it's just not there and you got to come to grips with that. There is no "what ifs" for the Utes this year. It is what it is.
I'm not saying Utah should have made a BCS Bowl this year. I realize they aren't an Oregon, Stanford, or USC caliber team.
However, Utah absolutely is an Oregon State, UCLA, Washington caliber team.
You ask what changed when they joined the Pac 12? The offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator, for starters. I think the defensive coordinator actually changed a year or so before joining. But the defense was actually worse even before joining the Pac 12, and has gotten better with time. The offense has consistently gotten worse every year.
I'm also not saying Utah needed to "turn around the program" in 2 years. I'm just saying there is no excuse for not having any offense whatsoever after 2 full recruiting classes as a member of the Pac 12, plus another recruiting class when everyone was pretty sure they'd be going to the Pac 12. At what point do we finally hold the coaches accountable?
Utah didn't need to "turn the program around" or anything drastic like that. They just needed to at least maintain what they had and not regress.
Utah spanked UCLA a few years ago by almost 40 points. Utah blew out UCLA last season. This year Utah couldn't move the ball on anyone, with the exception of a few flashes here and there.
They got worse. At least on the offensive side of the ball, Utah was considerably worse than last year. And that has nothing to do with the level of competition because they played all the same teams as last season. None of those teams are defensive powers anyway.
There are several players on Utah's offense who were terrible this year. Many of those players were very good last year, and even better the year before. I think it's pretty rare that a college kid would suddenly lose his talent. Even more rare that several of them would, all on the same team. More likely is the team didn't properly utilize them to make the best of their talent.
I want to reiterate though, I'm not putting it all on the coaches. There were enough dropped passes, fumbles, stupid penalties, bad throws, etc, coming from the players. I'm just saying the free ride the coaches have enjoyed is not warranted. Utah was regularly beating Pac 12 teams before they joined, and beat several last season as a member of the conference. They got worse this year, and that can't just be written off as new conference talent increase. It's probably more related to the 25 year old inexperienced offensive coordinator.
