History
The first intercollegiate athletic event in Utah State University's history took place on November 25, 1892, when the Agriculturalists defeated the football team from the University of Utah, 12–0. The game was played on what is now the quad, and it was the only game until 1896. The Aggies enjoyed early regional dominance, notching their first perfect season (7–0) in 1907. In 1911, under head coach Clayton Teetzel, the team again finished undefeated, even shutting out each of its five opponents by a collective score of 164 to 0. Hall of Fame. The makeshift field on the quad continued to serve the team until 1913, when football was moved to Adams Field, two blocks west of campus, where Adams Park now sits. The new field represented an improvement, but the facilities remained meager, which fact became more apparent with the success of Coach E. L. "Dick" Romney, who came to Logan in 1918. Romney, for whom the current football stadium is named, earned the team's first-ever conference championship in 1921, and compiled a 128–91–16 record in 29 seasons.
The program continued a rich legacy throughout the early- and mid-20th century, when the program produced a large number of athletes who went on to play in the NFL, including the legendary brothers and consensus All-Americans Merlin Olsen and Phil Olsen, who played for the Aggies. It was during this time that Utah State finished their only two seasons with year-end Top 25 rankings: No. 10 in 1961 and No. 19 in 1972.
Following the great heights of the 1960s and 70's, Aggie football fell upon hard times. Many of the Aggie faithful attribute the decline to administrators at both Utah and BYU freezing then-superior USU out of the newly-forming WAC. However, other factors cited as leading to the decline include a failure to upgrade facilities until recently, a lack of donors to athletics, complacency of past athletics directors, and instability in conferences. The longtime futility of the football program has had a negative effect on the perception of the university as a whole, and it is something that the Aggies are only now recovering from.
- 1914–1937: Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference
- 1938–1961: Mountain States Conference
- 1962–1977: Independent
- 1978–2000: Pacific Coast Athletic Association / Big West Conference
- 2001–2002: Independent
- 2003–2004: Sun Belt Conference
- 2005–2013: Western Athletic Conference
- 2013– : Mountain West Conference
After continual failed attempts to join the WAC, the program played as an independent program from 1962 through 1976, (Until joining the PCAA/Big West) and again from 2002 through 2004, before joining the geographically distant Sun Belt Conference, after the Big West Conference, which had housed the Aggies since 1978, elected to stop sponsoring football in 2001. USU's other teams remained in that conference until the school was finally invited to join the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in 2005. Despite having lobbied to join its in-state rivals Utah and BYU in the WAC for many decades prior to 2005, the Aggies gained membership only after the two other schools had left to form the Mountain West Conference. Utah State will join the Mountain West Conference in July 2013, again following departures by Utah and BYU.
Former head coach Gary Andersen led the team to new heights. In 2011 he lead the team to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, and the team's first winning season since 1997. The 2012 team has found far greater success, notching the school's first-ever 11-win season, the first outright conference championship since 1936, a return to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, defeating the 41 to 15 for the first bowl win in 19 years, and a national Top 25 rankings in all three major polls—the AP, ESPN/USA Today, and BCS.
Read more about this topic: Utah State Aggies Football
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“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)