"When we weren't winning, nobody said anything about the missions," legendary coach LaVell Edwards said in 1984, the year BYU won the national championship. "But once we started winning championships, why did people all of the sudden make it an issue? They used to say we couldn't win because of missionaries. Now they're saying we win because of missionaries. I wonder where all those people were when we were losing."

"What's with these missions? They hide you away and you get to work out for two years, right?"

"It's a typical BYU offensive line. They're 30 years old and weigh 400 pounds."

Colson's solution to the so-called BYU advantage? "The best thing to do," he replied, "would be to go out and get some Mormons."

"I remember as a coach at New Mexico or as a player at Oregon State coming to play BYU and thinking, 'How are we going to beat those guys? They've got all of those old guys on the line and they're big and mature. Man, we're just young guys.' 

Indeed, opposing coaches, and the national media, often complain publicly about the ages of BYU players when the Cougars are successful, as if that is the sole reason for that success.

"Why isn't anybody's underwear in a wad over the fact that BYU, 9-0 and ranked ninth in the country, fields a team that is, by and large, a special-ops force crushing Webelos," wrote Rick Reilly, then of Sports Illustrated, in 2001, in an article titled, "Brigham Young? I Don't Think So."

Reilly pointed out that half of BYU's players that year had served missions, and 21 of them were at least 24 years old, giving the Cougars an unfair advantage.

"I look in their locker room and see guys with receding hairlines," then-Wyoming coach Vic Koenning told Reilly. "I look out and see a lot of my guys still wearing their high school letter jacket."

But over time, those young men, and their experience, maturity and leadership, prove to be a strength."