jlb1705;1531495; said:
Agreed about Mendenhall. I just gained a lot of respect for him.
I didn't have them ranked on my BP Poll ballot to start the season. I hadn't seen them play and couldn't recall them beating anyone of note before. They just shot way up there on my ballot for next week.
In my eyes, if Boise State runs the table and BYU drops a game somewhere along the way, BYU will still be more deserving of a BCS bid. They looked better by far. I'll likely have Boise State just outside my top 25 this week still.
I think BYU will be #5 in my poll this week. I had them ranked in the high teens, IIRC, and getting a win over a top-5 team at a neutral site is more impressive than what anybody else has done, except for Alabama - which did the same thing without having the opponent lose a Heisman winner in the first half.
And before responding that my having BYU at #5 is crazy because they won't finish there, please finish reading this paragraph. Once the season has started, I believe the polls should be based primarily on what has happened season-to-date. That also means that there is bound to be a lot of volatility in the polls in the first few weeks. And that volatility is a good thing; the preseason polls, or somebody's expectations of what will transpire over the remainder of the season, are both inferior methods of ranking teams than what has actually happened on the field so far. Now, that doesn't mean I'll rank Air Force because they beat Nicholls State 72-0. Beating bad teams by wide margins doesn't impress me, but beating very good teams does.
Now someone might say, 'How do you know if BYU is really that good, or if Oklahoma was just vastly over-ranked based on what they did last year?" - and that's a good question. That's why what happens to Oklahoma over the rest of the year must be factored into how BYU is ranked from here on out.
But if BYU runs the table, they will have wins over Oklahoma, FSU, TCU, and Utah. In my mind, that will probably be good enough to get them into the BCS
Championship Game over anybody except an undefeated SEC Champ, an undefeated Big 12 Champ, or an undefeated USC/tOSU winner.
At the end of the year, if the only undefeateds are Florida, Penn State, and BYU - there will be a lot of controversy over which team is #2. But BYU may well have a more impressive resume than PSU if that happens.
