BYU football: The present may be painful, but the future looks bright

There’s a lot of young talent seeing playing time for BYU football. That may not be great for the Cougars now, but it bodes well for the future.

Take a look at who is getting significant playing time for BYU football. Here’s what you’ll see, by class:

• 11 seniors
• 17 juniors
• 10 sophomores
• 9 freshmen

Those are pretty even numbers, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Most good teams are full of juniors and seniors in their two-deeps, with a few sophomores and freshmen sprinkled in here and there.

The combination of experience and talent leads to good football. Even the top recruiting teams see most of their 4-and 5-star recruits ride the bench for the first few years.

BYU football’s lack of experience is no excuse for the Cougars’ abysmal start to the season, especially on the offensive side of the ball.

But it can help to explain some of why they’re struggling.

There’s no easy fix in the short-term. Don’t expect the Cougars to turn into world-beaters overnight, even with an extra week to work on improving.

But there’s plenty of hope for the future as the young talent on this team gets early experience.

Deja Vu all over again

This has happened before. Let’s take a look back at 2004.

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It was Gary Crowton’s final year as head coach at BYU. After two straight disappointing seasons, he entered ’04 with a young, but talented team.

When you break down that team’s main contributors by class, it looks like this:

• 12 seniors
• 12 juniors
• 13 sophomores
• 8 freshmen

That looks eerily familiar. BYU went 5-6 that year.

The next year: 6-5.

Then the breakthrough came in 2006. The Cougars went 11-2 and cracked the Top 25.

That campaign kicked off the best five-year stretch of Cougar football in the last two and half decades.

Just like 2004, this year will be a work in progress for BYU. They’ll improve. They’ll have a better record than that ’04 team and extend their bowl streak.

They can be a good team by the end of the year, but they won’t be great.

But as this year’s youngsters get better and more experienced, and the coaching staff continues to recruit more players to fit the schemes, this team will get better and better.

Patience isn’t always fun.

But it usually pays off.