This post is a bit about the Mountain West Conference which we can all get behind, even Tyler and Sabrina.
First off, BYU is getting rather messed over with having to play a pretty sad UCLA team in the Las Vegas Bowl. I realize that UCLA beat BYU earlier in the year, but I think that anyone who has followed their seasons since that point would recognize that BYU has improved over the seasons whereas UCLA had the bottom fall out. It turns out that this year the #1 MWC team is simply better than the #5 Pac10 team. But wait . . .
Last year the #1 MWC team (BYU) was loads better than #5 Pac10 (Oregon) as they throttled them so badly that the commentators even quit paying attention to the game.
The year before that the #1 MWC team (TCU) was so good they didn't even go to the Las Vegas Bowl. (They went to the Liberty Bowl or something like that. I don't recall the results.)
The year before that the #1 MWC team (UofU) was so good that they went to the Fiesta Bowl and beat the pants off Pitt.
Let's face it, the #1 MWC team is simply better than #5 Pac10. Our conference needs something better. Note, that I am not arguing that the MWC is better than the Pac10. I firmly believe that it is not, but we are worthy of something better than what we're getting.
Switching topics slightly . . . I was looking at college football stats the other day and noticed that while BYU is statistically in the lead in the conference in many categories, we are 7th in pass defense. That's not so good. But then, I noticed that we are 41st nationally. Ahead of BYU in the conference we have Utah (15th nationally), New Mexico (22nd), UNLV (23rd), Colorado State (30th), Wyoming (31st), and TCU (34th). Apparently the general idea that the MWC (as the true present day embodiment of the WAC) is a conference where everyone gets together an throws for 400 yards and 5 TDs on each other is not true at all. Rose Bowl bound Illinois (77th) and #6 Missouri (100th) are the teams giving up the big passing numbers these days.
1 comment:
I don't disagree at all. Everybody says that they would love to see BYU play Boise State in the Vegas Bowl. Isn't that a slight as well? The MWC's #1 team playing the WAC's #2 team. There's simply no justice either way.
(bytheway, the reason TCU was "so good they didn't even go to the Las Vegas Bowl" was that the Liberty Bowl was under contract to take the MWC Champion. Utah went there in 2003 and shutout Southern Miss. Therefore, the MWC champion has a 4 game bowl winning streak (CSU lost in the Liberty Bowl in 2002), and the streak better be 5 by the end of the year.
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