Wagon Wheel Aftermath: A Talk with Utah State RB Eltoro Allen

If you weren’t aware, Utah State defeated BYU 45-20 on Friday, October 5th.

In doing this, the Aggies won the rivalry trophy, the Old Wagon Wheel, for the second time in a as many years. This is the first time in 44 years that USU has done that.

I thought it would be interesting to get a player’s perspective on such a historic feat for the program, so I had a chat with Aggie Senior RB Eltoro Allen on what it was like to win the trophy and what it has done for team morale.

Starting off, I asked Eltoro what the locker room atmosphere was like after the victory:

EA: “It was amazing. ... After doing that, that locker room, you’ve seen the videos, we kinda lost it in there. It was rocking, it was a great time. It’s something I’m pretty sure we’ll all remember for the rest of our lives.”

For a a different look into the post-game locker room, here’s a video from Utah State Football’s twitter:

Following up, I asked Eltoro what it’s like to be the team that conquered this feat after so long:

EA: “I can’t say it enough, it’s been four decades. We as a team just want to be a team that’s going to be remembered here. We got a long way to go, we got a lot of games we wanna win to do that. That’s a small part we can add to it, just being that team to do it back to back.”

Momentum is everything, so I was curious as to how the victory over such a big rival can motivate the team going back into conference play:

EA: “The BYU game was a great win for us but that was last week and we’re focused on UNLV this week. One thing that we do, we wanna be 1-0 every week. We take it one week at a time. All our focus is on UNLV this week and then whoever we play the week after that and the week after that and the week after that, all the way to the Mountain West Championship. To keep that focus, keep that drive. Treat every opponent the same way.”

Wrapping up, I asked Eltoro what the team morale has been like all season after starting with such a tough loss and now riding a four-game win streak.

EA: “We can look at it in multiple ways. The loss to Michigan State, we played them tough, but at the end of the day we lost the game. Last year we had a really great team with a lot of great players. This year we kinda took that culture and translated it into this team. Adding in new players and molding that all together. I feel like as a team this year we jell together really great. Everybody gets along with everybody. We become a brotherhood. We all really mean it, we’re all brothers and we all go to battle for each other every game. It’s our Aggie brotherhood, we’ll fight for one another til the end.”

When asked if he had any last comments for me, Eltoro had just one thing to say:

“Go Aggies.”

Follow Alex Eiden (UnderDogsAlways) on Twitter @alexyatta_ and follow the MountainWestConnection @MWCConnection