BYU Football Season Review

This coming sunday (Jan 17) The Mtn will host BYU's Season Review at 4pm. So get up from your nap, and send the HTs out the door.

I gave BYU an A for the season. I set my base standard at 10 wins, given our schedule and my expectations. Anything above 10 wins was an additional letter grade. The Utah game and Bowl game were worth half a letter grade.



11 wins = B

Utah win = B+

Bowl win = A

Y&Brit wrote:
This coming sunday (Jan 17) The Mtn will host BYU's Season Review at 4pm. So get up from your nap, and send the HTs out the door.

HT on Jan 17th? It's not the 31st yet!

Here's to hoping they pronounce of our players' names correctly... let alone our team name.

hawkwing wrote:

This coming sunday (Jan 17) The Mtn will host BYU's Season Review at 4pm. So get up from your nap, and send the HTs out the door.

HT on Jan 17th? It's not the 31st yet!

Even if they are there, just get 'em some chicken wings and invite 'em to watch with ya.

I think it is interesting how every year that BYU beat Utah they also won the bowl game (under Mendenhall) and the years BYU lost to Utah, they lost the bowl game. Is there some reason why if we lose to Utah the bowl game becomes less important? Are the players too depressed after losing to get up for the game? Just an observation.



2005 Lost to Utah, Lost to Cal

2006 Beat Utah, Beat Oregon

2007 Beat Utah, Beat UCLA

2008 Lost to Utah, Lost to Arizona

2009 Beat Utah, Beat OSU

Bowl games are an interesting animal. They aren't a conference game, so it's not a vital win. It's not a big preseason game to set national credibility and rankings. I'm not sure Lavell ever took the bowl games terribly seriously. I know he viewed them as a reward for a successful season, and a time for the players to have fun, without the pressure of having to win the game. And maybe that approach showed in his poor bowl record.



Psychologically, no team ever wants to go into its bowl game coming off a big loss. I'd be interested in a national look at how teams do after winning or losing their last game of the season to their rival. The results might mirror what BYU does.



I also think the caliber of the opponent in the bowl game, plays into how the team plays. When the LV Bowl gets the sixth place team from the Pac-10, it's hard to get real excited about playing them. I think this year, even though the Pac-10 had a logjam at 2nd place, it appeared that OSU was the 2nd place team in the conference, so it felt like we were playing a highly ranked team (and they were ranked, which was unusual for our LV Bowl opponent).

Time for review.

I don't think you can count 2005. That team had the worst defensive talent on it that I can remember on a BYU team since I started watching in the late 80's. John Beck almost led that team back from being down huge at half time. They were not suffering from loss to utah hangover. the 2008 team was though (admittedly).

Is it possible that Utah is just a good measuring stick. When we are good enough to beat them, we are good enough to beat a mid Pac 10 team. I think that most years, Utah would be a mid Pac 10 team and so would BYU.



In 2008, we beat an 0-12 PAC 10 team on what some considered luck in a very close game at UW. Utah killed us. We were a little off that season and Utah was way up that season. I would like to have seen us beat Arizona, and with a couple of big breaks we might have - but just maybe - Zona was the better team at that point. Had we pulled out the win - wow it would have been 11-2 four years in a row.



Just in case the Utah thing is a jinx - some preseason poll, yes CBS Sports already has one posted over there, BYU 24, Utah 25, and USC 26. Unfortunatley, TCU is 7 and BSU is 2, so we will have to listen to the Blue Sprinkled Fairies all year again - oh, I forgot they stupidly scheduled an ACC road game to a Top 10 team - they will get smacked due to the jet lag, home field disadvantage, and probably biased officals from some BCS conference or just crappy ones from the WAC or MWC or PAC 10.



So let's just go ahead and edge the Utes, and win the Las Vegas Bowl again unless the other pattern is the real jinx - we lose every other year and we are due to lose in 2010.



Go Cougs

Nothing is written in stone; consider Scott Brown in Massachusetts. It is NOT written that must lose to Utah this year. I'm hoping for a Tyler Haws factor, a freshman QB that just shines, and so does the rest of the team, and BYU is better than year than we were last.



I start getting excited when I see sports writers saying that Heaps can make every throw, that he is cool in the pocket, doesn't get rattled, sees the entire field, and will be a great QB.