A preview of next week's preview

BYU and Utah look pretty even right now. BYU's struggles have been on D and in the return game. Utah's struggles have been on O and in the kicking game. Both got their butts kicked by the class of the league, TCU. Both lost potentially big games against BCS teams. BYU got killed, by a decent-at-best Florida State, who played a phenomenal game. Utah lost a close one to a potential Pac 10 Champion, who played horribly but still did enough to win. You could argue FSU played such a perfect game against BYU because BYU is bad and that Oregon played such a crappy game because Utah is good. I won't make that argument because I don't think it's true. If both games were played again right now, I'm not sure the ultimate outcome would change, though BYU would probably tighten up their margin of loss and Utah's would probably increase.

Comparing coaching for the two teams: Kyle is a great big game coach, but not a good day-to-day coach. His teams often overperform against superior talent, but definitely underperform against average competition. Bronco does a great job preparing his team week-to-week, day-to-day, for the most part dismantling all of their unranked opponents, while continually struggling against ranked opponents.

It's tough to decide whether this is a big game or not. Certainly you have the rivalry factor, which makes it a big game. It is two ranked teams playing in the last week of the season. But there is nothing all the line EXCEPT bragging rights. I know that is a lot to play for, but is playing for second place enough for BYU to go crawling into its shell as they often do? Will Utah get that big game mentality and play like world-beaters without the motivation of a BCS game or the thought of ruining BYU's season? I think BYU probably avoids playing TOO timid, and Utah will most likely play a less than perfect game. How will it play out then? You'll have to wait until next week to see what I think.