Short takes on the news | The Salt Lake Tribune

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Aggies triumph • The best there ever was. That's quite a rare honorific, and for the Aggies football team of 2012, it's quite true. Utah State University ended its campaign in Boise by defeating Toledo 41-15 last Saturday in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in which the Aggies, led by Kerwynn Williams, scored four touchdowns during just six minutes in the fourth quarter. Their opponents never got a touchdown. The Aggies' 11-2 season record was their best ever, and its bowl win was USU's first since 1993. Quarterback Chuckie Keeton broke the USU single-season record for pass completions and passing yards. A thrilling way to end a spectacular season. Logan is no doubt looking foward to 2013.

Build and learn • And then there was light — way too much light. In its zeal for safety, the Utah Department of Transportation went overboard trying to direct motorists to drive in the right direction on 5400 South. The major traffic corridor now has "flex lanes" on which drivers go one direction in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Control lights in red, green and yellow, placed every 500 feet, resulted in confusion and had some motorists running red lights or stopping for green ones at intersections. So officials have wisely doused the lights in the two outside lanes, which never reverse direction, just before and after each intersection so motorists can distinguish the intersection signals from all the other. Utah drivers have adjusted to innovations on many widened and improved sections of highway in the recent past. Sometimes its a learning experience for UDOT as well.

Polygamy policy • Attorney General-elect John Swallow says he will follow the policy set by current AG Mark Shurtleff in prosecuting — and not prosecuting — polygamists. In a state with a convoluted history of embracing and later outlawing the practice of polygamy, Shurtleff has taken a sensible approach: to investigate and prosecute cases of child abuse, domestic abuse, fraud and other crimes within polygamous communities but otherwise to leave consenting adult polygamists alone. Swallow will be walking a fine line in these cases, as Shurtleff has done regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But expending state resources to go after Utahns such as the husband and three wives of the Brown family, who have their own reality TV show, would be counterproductive. The Browns are suing to have Utah's anti-bigamy law overturned, and Swallow must defend the law. His job will not be easy.