Monday, January 12, 2009

Reevaluating BYU's season

Before I discuss BYU football, I wanted to point out something I would file under 'Public Official Using Sports to Get Publicity.' (See Congressional hearings on steriods for the best example. "Think about the children!")

The Utah Attorney General needs to get a life. In these lean economic times, do we need to spend tax payer dollars on a lawsuit like this? Granted he hasn't actually done it, but stop dude. I hate the BCS and I wish we had a playoff system, but the system has actually been pretty good to Utah, even if they didn't get a chance to play for the national championship twice. The school with the real beef is Boise State, undefeated and outside of the BCS games looking in.

Getting back to more important matters (namely BYU football), after watching Utah beat Alabama (which made me sick to my stomach) and watching TCU shut down one of the best offenses in the country, I want to temper the criticism I previously leveled against the team.

Why? Because this was, I believe after only looking for a little while, one of the best conference schedules we've ever played (though the non-conference schedule was pretty weak). Two of the top ten teams in the country played in the Mountain West (according to the Sagarin rankings and most observers). Arizona finished in the top 25. Yes, we lost to all three of those teams, but we were probably less talented than two of those teams (with the possible exception of Arizona).

So I would consider this season a success. The Cougars beat every team they should have beat, lost to the most even team we played (Arizona) and lost games to the two superior teams (TCU, Utah). And despite the loss of Collie, I think could be better on both sides of the ball next year. Granted, we'll need to be going against an awesome Oklahoma team and a pretty good Florida State team.

Despite all the jokes about the "Quest of perfection", I think the coaches and players had a good season.

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