Time for Wyoming to turn skeptics into believers

A recent ESPN.com story ranked the mood level of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision fan bases on a wide range of factors, including winning, rivalry dominance, coaching stability, recruiting, Twitter buzz and more.

The overall mood choices included thrilled, content, cautiously optimistic, skeptical or depressed.

For the University of Wyoming, the answer came back skeptical.

That feels pretty accurate, and with good reason.

During the last two decades, there hasn't been a lot of reason to be optimistic about UW, even within the good years.

In the last 20 years, the Cowboys have produced seven winning seasons and four bowl games.

And we all know the number of back-to-back winning seasons or bowl games the program has produced in that span, right?

That would be zero.

But when you dig a little deeper, you see the reason for Cowboys fans to be skeptical.

The last winning season prior to 2016 came in 2011, when the Cowboys went 8-5 under Dave Christensen and were in the hunt for a Mountain West title as late as early November.

With Brett Smith back at quarterback, the excitement level was high for 2012.

It lasted about three games.

UW lost to Texas to start the season, then dropped nail-biters to Toledo and Cal Poly at home. That was the beginning of a 1-7 start and the end of any continued success.

Slide back another couple years, when Christensen's first season produced a 7-6 record and a thrilling double-overtime win over Fresno State in the New Mexico Bowl.

The next season? Not good – as in 3-9 not good.

Joe Glenn's second season at UW produced a 7-5 record and a win over UCLA in the 2004 Las Vegas Bowl.

The next season, the Cowboys started 4-1 before losing the final six games of the season, and Glenn was never able to recapture the excitement of his second season.

Which brings us to today.

UW certainly feels as if it has – as Cowboys coach Craig Bohl often says – the arrow pointing up.

The 2016 season was as memorable as any in the last two decades. Breakthrough wins against Boise State (for the first time ever), at Colorado State to break a long road losing streak, and a heart-stopper against San Diego State clinched the program's first Mountain West Mountain Division championship.

The national media has gushed over quarterback Josh Allen this spring and summer, with some draft experts predicting Allen as a top overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft.

The buzz is as loud for UW as it's been in some time.

Now the program needs to not be a buzzkill.

I'm not saying UW must improve upon last year's 8-6 record to continue having the arrow point upward, although a better finish certainly wouldn't hurt.

UW needs to do the things winning programs do, like proving 2016 wasn't a fluke and going to back-to-back bowl games, which hasn't been done since the late 1980s at UW.

This team certainly feels like the one to break both droughts.

The Cowboys will need to replace several offensive weapons who are now on NFL rosters. But unlike in years past, there seems to be talent ready to step into those roles.

UW absolutely needs to be better on defense than it was last season.

The visions of UNLV and New Mexico running through UW's defense are still enough to keep any Cowboys fan up at night.

But again, UW appears to be more talented and deep on that side of the football than at any point in the last couple decades.

The schedule flips somewhat in UW's favor as well.

Gone are San Diego State and UNLV from the west side of the conference, replaced by struggling programs in Fresno State and San Jose State.

UW also has a month-long stretch of home games following Saturday's opener at Iowa, including the much-anticipated arrival from Oregon on Sept. 16.

And, above all else, when No. 17 decided to return for his junior year, maybe for the first time in a long time, UW finally started catching that break it seemed to miss so many times previously.

Saturday should be fun and exciting for UW, but it won't be the be-all, end-all for the 2017 season. Win or lose, we won't truly be able to gauge whether the Cowboys have officially turned the corner into a consistent winner.

That will come against the likes of Oregon, Hawaii and Texas State and continue deep into the MW schedule. Consistently good football programs win those games.

If UW is in contention to defend its MW Mountain title as the calendar flips to November, then we'll know the Cowboys aren't the same ol' Cowboys as years past.

And there will be far fewer skeptics among the UW fan base than years past as well.