The Utah Utes have struggled as of late, but that hasn't stopped Kyle Whittingham from besting Bronco Mendenhall in Holy War games. Utah has won the last four and five of the last six against BYU in their annual matchup, and Utah kept the dominance going in their 2013 matchup.
This has added importance because the Utah-BYU rivalry will be going away. Due to the intense demands of Utah's Pac-12 schedule, the Utes have pretty much told the Cougars that their rivalry game puts a huge dent on the team's schedule flexibility. So Utah and BYU will have to put their grudge aside for the time being until a more feasible settlement can be made.
See more from Block U about the importance of the Holy War and where it will be going for the near future.
Utah football has taken control of the Holy War and hopefully there is no looking back. There shouldn't be any looking back because, for the first time since the 1960s, the Utes football program is head and shoulders better than their rivals to the south.
A few years ago, a statement like that could have been challenged. But I think Saturday night definitively proved how wide the gap is becoming between Provo and Salt Lake City. The Cougars, for all their grit and determination, just can't stack up, head-to-head or otherwise, with Utah. They're a good non-BCS team, and occasionally might field a better team, but on the whole, the contrast between both programs is astonishingly stark - the Utes are finally looking like a BCS team and BYU, regardless of their win over Texas, has firmly established itself among the lot of fairly average mid-major programs.
While I don't think Utah has fully outgrown the rivalry, and it's still an amazing game with an immense amount of atmosphere, both programs are heading in different directions and that will only continue until the Cougars somehow wrestle themselves a Big 12 invite. That's not likely.