Predictions

I didn't have much time to post anything this week but here are my predictions:
BYU 45 CSU 17
SDSU 13 Air Force 28
TCU 24 Clemson 21
UNLV 13 Wyoming 14
Louisville 28 Utah 31
New Mexico 21 NM St. 19

Was that just a nightmare?

Really? I'm just waiting for my wife to wake me up from my Saturday afternoon nap and tell me to hurry up or we'll be late for the FSU game. Since I never fell asleep on Saturday then I don't think that will happen so here is my take on Saturday's game.
First, crow does not taste very good at all. It's kind of bitter in fact. That's mostly because of all the BYU haters that love to salt the wound. But it also tastes especially bitter because I predicted not just a BYU win but a blowout. I was obviously way off the mark. In my own defense though, that was not the same team that came to play in weeks one and two. A lot of that is because of how good FSU was. Their speed and execution gave us huge problems and we were never able to stop them.
That having been said, this was not the end of the world. We are 2-1 and guess what? That is exactly the record most thought was our best case scenario heading into conference play. We are still in good position to win the conference and then we'll see what happens from there.
Turnovers were huge, but I don't really care to dissect the whole game because it was a complete disaster. I hope we don't see that kind of game later on in the year.

Key Matchups and Predictions

I couldn't get Keyshawn Johnson to do any "key match ups" for my blog so I'll just have to analyze a couple match ups myself. First off there aren't really any personel match ups that jump out at me, just one or two group or team match ups.

BYU's physicality and discipline vs FSU's speed and inexperience: FSU's biggest advantage is their athleticism and speed. Their biggest problem is that their speed is very inexperienced and undisciplined. Speed does kill, but having speed without discipline is like having a loaded revolver but then pointing it at yourself. It kills, just not who you would like. Anyone who watched the Miami game saw that FSU's secondary really had no idea what was going on. They were fast but they were always in the wrong spot. BYU's offense has a lot better execution than Miami's and this is a big problem for FSU. If the Seminoles secondary is still lost come Saturday, Max Hall and co. will score at will.
BYU's biggest advantage in this match up is their physicality and size, especially at the Tight End position. Dennis Pitta will be to much for the FSU defense to handle.
I think the biggest question coming into Saturday is how will our size on defense match up with their speed on offense? BYU will score points but the defense has not faced receivers this fast. FSU has an experienced O-line and should give Ponder plenty of time to find his receivers. Which brings me to my next key match up.

BYU crowd vs FSU O-line: This will be huge. Our home fans will be really loud and will confuse the FSU O-line which will allow our blitz packages to be a lot more effective. It will also give our defensive guys a lot of energy to fly around to the ball and make some huge hits. If the crowd stays in this things and makes it hard for the O-line to hear the blocking assignments then the BYU defense will hold the FSU offense to less than 14 points. Here is my prediction for the game. BYU 38 FSU 13

AROUND THE MWC

Last week I went 7-1 with my picks but I forgot to make a pick for the UNLV vs Oregon St. game. Here are my picks for this week

Utah 31 Oregon 35: This is a revenge game for the Ducks and although I don't think either team is all that great, I'm going to pick Oregon in a close one.

Wyoming 21 Colorado 13: Colorado is terrible this year starting out 0-2. Wyoming gave Texas a scare in the first half but in the end their defense was on the field too long. Their offense is awful and if they can muster a few point I think they will win this match up only because of how good their D is.

Nevada 35 Colorado st 31: I give the advantage to CSU only because they get this game at home. They are improving but they still have a long ways to go. Nevada is not nearly as good I thought they would be after getting throttle by ND. However CSU will falter in the end and Nevada will come away with the victory

San Diego St 35 Idaho 13: I like the Aztec's schedule so far. After whipping up on power house SUU, It's time for Idaho to take its beating too.

Texas St 13 TCU 45: TCU will basically shut down Texas St. but they will give up a few meaningless points with their 3rd stringers in.

Air Force 31 New Mexico 21: At this point an improving Air Force is a better pick than a bottom 10 team in New Mexico.

Hawii 13 UNLV 21: The rebels looked good in playing a close game with the Beavers and I think they will take care of Hawii at home.

Rich Kaipust Responds

I just got an email back from Mr. Kaipust and it was pretty much what I expected. Not much of an explanation and pretty weak ones when he did offer them. Here is what he responded and I'll let you decide.

D.J. -- As with most voters since AP made access to votes public, I get lots of e-mails. I'd like to scribble some replies but am a little short on time this week with having to bang out some work here before we travel to Blacksburg on Friday. One thing for sure is the thought of putting VT high to help Nebraska never crossed my mind until just now. No Big 12 bias either on Oklahoma or Oklahoma State. Just seen enough of them to know how good they are.

Let me tell you this: It's really hard to look at a head-to-head game and say jump somebody ahead of somebody else just because they beat them. If Troy beat Florida last week, do you automatically jump them ahead? There's no magic formula I go by (and I'm sure none of the other 59 do, either). It's just a weird cross of gut and head.

Also, I've done this for several years and there's always a real flux in September. Everything starts to play itself out and you'll notice votes fall more in line with each other over time.

I know that probably doesn't help, but I've got to run.

Rich

My biggest problem in his explanation is probably in his comparison of Troy and Florida to BYU and Oklahoma. Even if they were comparable you wouldn't expect him to put Florida in the top ten after a loss to Troy. I do agree with him when he talks about a flux in September though. Basically I am taking from this that AP voters just kind of put whatever they want for the first few weeks. We'll see if they start to vote a little more rational in the coming weeks.

AP Poll Bias?

It's a pretty slow morning for football (and at work) so I was just looking around at pollspeak.com (A website that publishes the AP Top 25 ballots for each voter) and a few things stuck out to me. In particular the ballot of Nebraska voter Rich Kaipust. I thought his votes were kind of odd and very biased so I shot him an email to ask him if he could explain his voting. He has not yet responded (I sent the email yesterday)but I will publish his response here as soon as he does. The email was as follows:

Hi, I was just looking at pollspeak.com and I had a few questions that I wanted to throw your way about your AP poll. The first ranking that jumped out to me was how high you had Virginia Tech. This one puzzled me because I couldn't figure out why you put them higher than almost everyone else did. Then I read one of your articles and realized that VT is one of the Huskers future opponents and I couldn't help but wonder if their high ranking was maybe done to help Nebraska's SOS? The other teams that jumped out to me, I could not think of any explanations and so I was hoping I could get some from you.

1. Why did you rank North Carolina so high? Do you really think they deserve to be ranked higher than BYU after having beat The Citadel and Connecticut?

2. Why is Oklahoma St. still ranked so high after losing to Houston who you only have ranked at 21? Big 12 Bias?

3. Please explain why Boise St. deserves to be ranked higher than BYU? Is their home win over Oregon better than the Cougar's virtual road win over Oklahoma?

4.Why do you still think Oklahoma is still better than BYU, and 6th best in the country at 1-1? Maybe another Big 12 Bias?

I know you don't have to answer this but I will give you huge props if you have the guts to back up your opinion.

Thanks for your time

I'd like to look at a few ballots each week and email the voters that have somewhat fishy ballots. I guess we'll find out which ones have the cajones to back up their votes. For those wanting to see for themselves, here is a direct link to his ballot:

http://pollspeak.com/pollstalker/pollstalker.php?s=9&p=18&t1=16&t2=75&v=54&w=3&r=V

Breaking Down Coach Toledo

After reading coach Toledo's comments on BYU's returned missionaries, a lot of us were a bit confused and most thought it was a little funny. I thought I would come to coach's defense and explain some of his comments.

"They've got guys going on 2-year missions and they come back". Now we have to take it easy on Coach for this one. We all know that 99.9% of our missionaries come back. Coach Toledo was just a little confused because the last time one of his players said he was going on a 2 year "mission" he never came back. Turns out his mission was to the New Orleans prison.

"I would venture to say that I heard that there's like forty-something guys that are married on that football team and I know they have kids too." Most of us thought that when he said "they have kids too" that he was adding that to say they were married, AND they had kids. He was really just finding the common ground between the two teams, his players have kids, and our players do too. The only difference is that his players are unsure of where their kids are or who they are.

"So, they're mature guys who are responsible people too". I think that he is comparing the two teams again. Both teams are mature enough to have offspring, BYU's players are also responsible because they know how many kids they have.

"But they're an experienced football team because of the Mormon Faith they have to do the 2-year mission as I mentioned, they come back." I think he is still a little upset about his player not coming back from his "mission".

"I know one guy went away as a quarterback and when he came back he was a nose tackle." By nose tackle I think he means the ability to sniff out and tackle anyone on the team who has Twinkies.

"They grow and mature." I've got to be honest I'm not really sure where he is going with this one. I was really unaware of the fact that our players grow and mature so I'll have to just wait for Toledo to explain this one himself.

Well that's all guys. Have a great day and GO COUGARS!

Counting down to Saturday:Preveiw

I was just reading the weekly news conference from Tulane Coach Bob Toledo. Here is the opening paragraph on BYU. Thought this was kind of funny.

'They're an older, much more mature football team than anybody in the country. They've got guys going on 2-year missions and they come back. I would venture to say that I heard that there's like forty-something guys that are married on that football team and I know they have kids too. So, they're mature guys who are responsible people too. But they're an experienced football team because of the Mormon Faith they have to do the 2-year mission as I mentioned, they come back...I know one guy went away as a quarterback and when he came back he was a nose tackle. They grow and mature."

Anyone know who the nose tackle turned Quarterback is? Anyway it sounds like he's already making excuses for the beat down Tulane is going to get this weekend. We should be used to this by now, if BYU sucks it's because they are old, white guys, if they are good then of course it's because of how mature and big the Mormon missions make them. Now for the Tulane offensive preview:

Quarterback: Joe Kemp is a young kid who made his first collegiate start last week. He started out really slow and looked nervous. He really started to play well in the 3rd quarter, but because he is young he makes a lot of mistakes. I think we will get a couple picks and a lot of sacks on Saturday. Tulane does pass well enough that if our secondary doesn't come with the same intensity that it did against Oklahoma (or somewhere close to that) then we will get burned a few times.

Running Back: Not sure there is much to go off in this game. Tulane only rushed for 39 yards and they weren't going up against Oklahoma's D-line. I don't think we need to worry about their run game too much.

Receivers: Here is where I think we could get burned for a few quick touchdowns if we're not ready to play out of the gates. Jeremy Williams had 5 catches for 139 yards and was Tulane's leading receiver.

O-line: All the message boards point to the o-line as one of the big weaknesses of the this Tulane team. I expect our defensive front to own their offensive line and to create a lot of problems for their offense. Bronco said in the MWC news conference that Tulane is usually good for a few trick plays a game. I think they will use a lot of trick plays to try and stay in the game. Our guys need to stay home and trust their teammates to make plays.

Special Teams: The biggest weakness of this team was the special teams play. Tulsa returned a punt for a touchdown and had a lot of kickoff return yards. Just poor coverage and poor tackling. Jacobson and Chambers should have big nights.

I'm knocking on wood as I'm typing this, but I think Saturday will be a blow out. No chance that we lose focus and let Tulane stay in this thing. It's only the 2nd game of the year as Bronco said, so it won't be hard to keep the guys focused on The Green Wave. Plus you can add in the fact that our older, more mature and players will be ready to play, because of their 2 year Mormon missions of course.
Here's my score prediction BYU 45 Tulane 13

I'm also going to start predicting the scores for the rest of the MWC. Here they are:
Texas 21 Wyoming 7
TCU 35 Virginia 21
Weber St. 13 CSU 31
Air Force 38 Minnesota 35
Tulsa 34 New Mexico 21
SUU 13 SDSU 28
Utah 31 San Jose St 21

Happy BIRTHDAY RANEE!!

Just want to give a shout out to my amazing sister! She is turning 27 today! Happy B-day sis.

How to spot a bandwagoner.

I'm not sure if bandwagoner is a word or not but I'm going to use it anyway. I was walking around Wal-Mart today and I was surprised at how many people were dawning BYU apparel. It seemed like everybody and there dog was wearing a BYU t-shirt. It's good news that people are excited about BYU football after a huge win, but it got me thinking. How can I spot the bandwagoners. The guys who didn't even know when the season started until they heard that BYU beat Oklahoma then all of the sudden they grew up watching the Cougars. I came up with a list of ways to spot a fair-weather fan.
1. They are wearing a Quest for Perfection T-shirt. Seriously people put those shirts back in your closet. You might have been naive enough to buy one in the first place but a real fan would know to keep that thing in the attic. Shell out the 5 bucks and buy the 25 year anniversary T-shirt.
2. This one will require you to look around at the stadium on game day. The real fans will be wearing Cougar blue. The bandwagoners will be wearing anything else. Like the guy behind you in the pink polo shirt who is flirting with the girl behind him who "got all dolled up for the game" and is wearing more make-up than bozo the clown.
OK so now that I've got that o ut of the way here are my position by positiongrades from the Oklahoma game.

Quarterback: A, Max was awesome on Saturday. Doman said it right when he said that if you're going up against a defense as good as Oklahoma's you're going to throw an interception. The thing that impressed me was how he came back from those. Against Utah and TCU he fell apart after making a couple of mistakes but on Saturday he just buckled down and got better. The final drive to take the lead was possibly one of the gutsiest any quarterback at BYU has led.

Running Back: B+, Kariya get's an A for doing a superb job in filling in for Unga. He ran hard and he was very valuable in the passing game. Tonga get's an A for his lead blocking but a C or D for his actual running. When he had the ball he looked slow and out of shape. That is to be expected after being out for so long but it really doesn't concern me that he didn't run well. His blocking was great.

Offensive Line: B+, For all the injuries that these guy fought through they were spectacular. They held off an amazing OU defensive line for 4 quarters. The reason that I'm not giving them an A is because they had a bit of a lapse in the 3rd quarter where they didn't give Hall very much time at all. Overall this group has a huge upside if they can play like that all year long. One of my favorite plays was when Terrence Brown followed the play to then end and got us an extra 4 yards because of his hustle. For those that don't remember it was when he jumped over his own guy and then hit 3 Oklahoma defenders that were tackling Kariya and knocked the pile ahead 3 or 4 yards. A lot of the credit goes to Mark Weber who has obviously done a great job getting these guys on the same page.

Tight Ends: A+, Mr. 3rd Down and Mr. 3rd down Jr. came through all game long when we needed them. George with a TD and couple huge 3rd down catches, and Pitta with the big 4th down conversion and a few 3rd down conversions for good measure. The OU corners did a great job of shutting down the outside. Thanks to Pitta and George we still had plenty of yards up the middle.

Receivers: C, probably the only dull spot of the night. Jacobson had the huge TD catch but he also had the huge punt return fumble that gave OU their only TD of the game. Chambers also looked good but then he fumbled the ball on the goal line in a big situation. Lots of upside but they need to clean up the mistakes. On the other hand they had a tough night because of how good the OU corners played.

Defensive Line: A+, We manhandled OU's offensive line because our defensive line did a heck of a job at plugging up the middle and stopping the run. Everyone was taking on 2 blockers which opened up a lot of space for out line-backers to blitz and put tons of pressure on their quarterback.

Linebackers: A, after Bauman went down a was a little bit worried, but no one played as hard as Pendleton did to make up for it. His play really was inspiring. He made a lot of huge plays. The other outside linebacker, Clawson was also great. He did what he does best and that is put pressure on the QB. Clawson has great down hill speed and that makes up for his lack of lateral quickness.

Secondary: A+, obviously these guys did a great job. For the first time in a long time when a pass went up I didn't worry. These guys found the ball all night long. They had some great open field tackles and some great pass breakups. I'm really excited for these guys. I think the scheme helped them out a lot too. Because of the pressure we were able to get on the QB they didn't have to stay in coverage as long. Win Win.

Coaches: A+, Wow BYU was really prepared for this game. Play of the game was the double play call on the final drive when we did the draw play on 3rd (I was screaming at the TV on that play btw) and then the quick snap and pass to Pitta on 4th. Great job by the coaches and an excellent move to put Doman on the side line and move Anae to the Box.

Helmet Stickers

First Sticker goes to Jordan Pendleton: The guy was everywhere. He was in on almost every big play.
Next one goes to Andrew Rich and Colby Clawson the two Snow College Transfer. Like Pendleton they were in on every big play. I think I might just go ahead and give the whole defense a sticker. That was the best I've ever seen our defense play.
On offense I'll go ahead and give the stickers to Max Hall, Dennis Pitta and a very inexperienced o-line there held there own against a great defensive front from Oklahoma. Hall gets one because of the grit he showed by coming back and leading the Cougars to a game-winning drive after throwing 2 interceptions. Pitta gets one because he is just awesome. He needs a new nick name. Maybe something like Mr. 3rd Down.
If you'll look at my prediction for the game you will see that I picked the spread for the game. I had BYU 35-34.

Thoughts from last nights game

So last night I arrived at my brothers house at around half time of the Utah-Utah St. game. I have to admit I was pretty excited, not only because it marked the official start to college football this year, but also because I had heard that the MTN was going HD. I was obviously disappointed to find out that they had decided to go with web cams instead. The quality was really awful. You couldn't tell where the Ball as going on passes because the picture was so jumpy. I'm glad our first two games are in HD on ESPN.
On the football sideI wasn't too impressed with Cain's performance either. Maybe he just wasn't as focused because Utah St. really is terrible, but he did not look like he could complete a pass for longer than 15 yds. I looked at the stats and he had a very respectable line going 20-30 with 286 yds 2 TD's and 1 int. but all the throws I saw him complete in the second half were 5-10 yd throws. Anything longer than that he completely missed the target. Asiata on the other hand was a beast, either that or Utah St. is terrible at stopping the run. I think it's both. Anyway with as bad as Utah St. looked, Oregon looked worse against the Boise St. Donkeys. There offense was ugly to say the least. For anyone who missed it, it took them almost 3 quarters to get their first First Down of the game. Is anyone else wondering how in the heck Oregon can start out every year ranked in the top 25 and then subsequently drop off the map and still end up in the top 25 the following year?
Only about a day and a half left until kickoff! GO COUGARS!
Also if you missed it here is the youtube video of the sucker punch from the Oregon Boise St. game.

Preivew: BYU vs Oklahoma

Kickoff is just around the corner so I'm going to get the ball rolling on my blog with my first ever game preview. So here it goes with some key match-ups:
Max Hall's red scooter vs. Sam Bradford's friendship with Colt McCoy:
Earlier there were quite a few Cougar fans that were upset that Max Hall owned a red scooter complaining that it was a "yewt scooter". I personally won't worry about his scooter unless he is giving Dennis Pitta a ride to practice on the back. These are probably the same fans that would criticize Bronco if he were to get a bloody nose and fail to change the color of his blood to blue. Sam Bradford's friendship with Texas QB Colt McCoy, however, is a quite the story. Mostly because I have to wonder just how close they are. I am going to assume that if Bradford had an orange scooter he would've given Colt a ride to the QB camps every day. The only thing I am waiting for on this one is for Bradford to invite McCoy to guest star on his fashion show on HGTV. The advantage in this one goes to Max Hall. You can keep your red scooter.
Dennis Pitta vs. Jermaine Gresham: Well up until a few hours ago this one would have been pretty close until ESPN reported that Gresham was out for the game with a knee injury. Now I can gladly chalk up this one as advantage BYU. That is of course assuming that Gresham has not yet appeared on Bradford's fashion show and will not be dawning any flamboyant or otherwise distracting clothing. (NOTE: Anyone who would like to attack me for not being disappointed at another players injury, save your breath. I know I must be a terrible person but I'll take any break we can get in this one)
BYU O-Line vs. Oklahoma D-line: What we still have an O-line? That's news to me. Lucky for us Oklahoma is suffering from the same problem on their O-line so maybe we can survive a shootout. Edge on this one goes to Oklahoma.
BYU Secondary vs Oklahoma Receivers: I was unaware that our secondary was making the flight to Texas this weekend. I figured we would just place cardboard cutouts of Aaron Fransisco about 10 yards deep then hope Bradford doesn't notice and will only throw to his back up tight end. Advantage Oklahoma.
BYU's Best Chance of Winning: Get the Mets to give Oklahoma pep talk before the game and at half-time causing Oklahoma to blow a huge lead. Other options are to get Hanley Ramirez from the Marlins to convince Sam Brandford that he needs to fake an ACL injury so he can be on Sports Center. If those don't work we can convince Bradford that his best chance at stardom is to lose unexpectedly then give a moving speech about how no one in the country will work harder than he will to win the National Championship.
Ok joking aside I think in order for BYU to have a chance they have to come out hard and fast (that's what... never mind I'll keep this "G" rated). OK so now all joking aside for real. The offense needs to come out with something the Sooners haven't seen. Maybe a 5 receiver set or something. March down the field in a two minute offense and don't give the defense a chance to rest until the game is over. If we can be successful in that for the first couple series then we could be in for a real thriller. If this is the case then I will predict a Cougar upset, if we come out with the same vanilla execution doesn't matter who the opponent is stuff then it will end up a lot like last years TCU game only worse. And the Score will be: BYU 35 Oklahoma 34.

Jermaine Gresham out against BYU

I was just watching Sport Center this morning and they are reporting that Gresham will not play against BYU. You never want anyone to get injured but this is a huge break for BYU. I don't think it will be enough to get us past the Sooners but you never know.

10 Things you'll see in CougarLand this school year.

10. BYU's Basketball team will Sweep the MWC major awards, Player of the Year (Jimmer Fredette), DPoy(Jackson Emery or Charles Abuo) and Rookie of the Year(Tyler Haws).
9. Tyler Haws will start or at least get 30 minutes a game by the end of the year. I watched this kid work out with the team and his shot is butter. I might get hammered for this but his shot is just as smooth as Lee's was as a senior, and this kid is a freshman. The one thing I can see he'll need to improve is his defense, but what freshman doesn't have to work on that?
8. Max Hall will take a trip to New York in January, but he won't get quite enough votes to come away with a trophy.
7. Dennis Pitta will serious challenge Hall for Offensive POY. He won't get it though because Max will be too good. Plus all of Pitta numbers come from Hall. It will be tough for the voters to choose Dennis over Max and so I think Max gets the hardware but both will be deserving.
6. BYU return the Deseret First Duel Trophy to Provo. The women's sports need to start pulling their weight this year. In last years loss, the large majority of BYU's points came from men's sports. Come on Ladies we you've got it in you this year!
5. The Basketball team will get revenge from last year's loss to ASU. James Hardin is gone and so are his personal referees. The crowd will play a huge factor in this game as they will be very riled up.
4. The football team will get revenge on Utah and TCU. Both games are at home and something the Cougs won't do this year is lose at home.
3. The Football Team will end the year with only one loss. The Cougars will press the Sooners this saturday but will come out with a close loss. They will recover though to win the final 10 games (plus a bowl game) of the season.
2. The Basketball team will win the MWC by at least 2 games. They will lose to UNLV at the invitational and will receive an 8 seed and play Texas A&M in the tournament.
1. The football team will crash the BCS party for the first time and will get a rematch against Oregon in the Rose Bowl.