Blog written by Matt Willie, Editor-in-Chief of the website CowboyBlitz.com , which extensively covers all Wyoming Cowboys athletics and recruiting.

On second thought, maybe it was a one-time thing.

When Joe Glenn made national news with his finger-pointing fiasco at Utah three weeks ago, I considered it the lowest moment of his five-year coaching career with the Cowboys.

Even worse, I wondered whether the normally good-humored football foreman had finally revealed his true character.

UW Athletics Director Tom Burman seemed to view it differently, calling the shady salute a “one-time incident” and expressing confidence that Glenn would not make the same mistake again.

To be honest, until today, I still had my doubts.

When Glenn fired Offensive Coordinator Bill Cockhill last weekend, I decided to call up a few potential commits to see how the move affected their recruiting process. For the most part, nobody seemed to be wavering—until I got a call from California high school standout Adam Barry.

I had left a message on Barry’s phone, asking him to give me his thoughts on the Cockhill firing, and the three-star quarterback recruit called me back more than a little shaken up. The coaching change was news to him—and not the kind he was excited to hear.

“It’s definitely going to have an impact,” he told me. “If I commit, I don’t want the new guy coming in if I’m not the style of quarterback he’s looking for.

“Just hearing that, I’m going to check out and see who they hire and who they have in mind for hiring.”

I found out later that he’d actually been planning to give Wyoming a verbal this Friday, but after we talked he said it was “a different story now.” His mom even got a bit stressed out and ended up texting one of Scout.com’s recruiting experts about the staff shakeup.

I, of course, felt like crap about the whole thing. As much as I try to be objective, I’m a fan at heart, and I hated feeling like I did something to screw up the team’s chances of landing a top-level recruit.

But Barry called me back just 15 minutes later, and he was audibly calmer. He said he just got off the phone with Glenn, who told him that this “wasn’t going to turn out like all those other stories” and that he didn’t need to worry.

The coolest part was that I could tell he really wasn’t worrying anymore.

It was then that I realized why I’ve always liked Glenn so much and what it is about him that’s made fans practically fall in love with the guy. Glenn oozes charisma. He has an uncanny ability to say exactly what people need to hear at exactly the right moment. He makes you feel comfortable, as if he cares about you—even if he doesn’t know your name. Sometimes I wonder how much a few of his assistants really understand about the game of football, but no one can question Glenn’s people skills.

College coaches need to be more than schematic geniuses and game-plan gurus. They can’t brush off the media, like Bill Belichick, or throw in-game tantrums, a la Lou Piniella (except for Bobby Knight, of course). The nature of their jobs requires a certain amount of PR ability, and Wyoming may not have ever had a coach more adept in that area than Glenn.

That’s why it was such a shocker to see him tell Kyle Whittingham what he really thought of him after the Utes rolled out the hands team with a 43-point lead.

The more I think about it, the more out of character it seems. Since Glenn came to Laramie, we’ve seen him not only vastly improve the team’s recruiting reputation and vault the Cowboys back into Mountain West Conference contention but also:

Re-coin fan-favorite maxims like “Powder River Let ‘Er Buck”

Find creative ways to relate football games to boxing matches

Sing “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” on camera…while playing with children

Get his players to sing “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” on camera…while smiling

Play the piano and sing “Ragtime Cowboy Joe”

Put “voodoo” on Syracuse for backing out of their commitment to come to Wyoming …and even

Show some serious humility by not only apologizing for flipping the bird, but calling himself “stupid” and recognizing that he needs to keep his “big Irish mouth” shut sometimes.

In fact, that only scratches the surface. His impact on UW football has been monumental, especially considering where the team was when he took over half a decade ago.

The point is, as bad as the picture of Glenn’s upright middle finger looked on national television three weeks ago, he is one of the few guys who has the personality to make up for it in the long run. And when you consider his track record, chances are he probably will. While he has struggled to put together winning seasons in Laramie (partly because his offense under Cockhill has been a continual disappointment), the guy has won three national championships, six conference titles and posted a 179-85-1 career record.

It should be obvious by now that he is a winner.

And in that respect, he may not have ever had a more frustrating moment as a head coach than being down 43-0 and having to recover an onside kick from a classless coach trying to run up the score on national television. Should he have told Whittingham he was “Number One?” Probably not. But can we really blame him?

That’s been the question of the month for me as a Cowboys fan. In the meantime, I’ve also been chewing on this:

I had a talk with my father-in-law a couple weeks back about how disappointing this season has been and whether or not we should think about pursuing a new head coach. There was one thing I got out of our conversation that—like it or not—probably strikes a chord with all UW faithful.

“We’ll never get another top-notch coach to stay here in Wyoming,” he told me.

Joe Tiller provides the most recent evidence of that statement’s veracity, but the fortunate reality is, Joe Glenn may actually have enough Wyoming in him to stick around—even after he’s been nationally recognized as “top-notch.”

So yes, on second thought I would rather give Cowboy Joe another chance and see what kind of miracles he and his Irish mouth can produce.