On November 17, 2007, BYU took a 7-2 team to Laramie, Wyoming in a snowstorm. The Cowboys were 5-5, and still had hope of going to a bowl game by beating their self-proclaimed rivals. When all the snow had fallen and the 60 minutes had lapsed, BYU walked away with a 35-10 victory over Wyoming. The following day, the polls came out, the BCS standings came out, and BYU showed up between 23 and 25. In every week since then, BYU has showed up in the rankings and in the BCS standings. Until this week. For 29 consecutive polls, BYU has been there. Very few BCS teams have current streaks longer than that one and no non-BCS team does, despite what some avid Utah fans think.
BYU takes the week off before heading to Laramie with a 6-2 team in two weeks. With a win there, they can get another streak of top 25 rankings started. They might even get lucky and sneak back in this next week with a couple of losses ahead of them. The question then becomes how long could another streak really last: Utah is right around the corner and, if they do win out, they will get a Pac 10 opponent in their bowl game. If they win out, including the bowl game, they have a chance to be in the preseason polls next season. Anything short of an 11-2 finish to this season, and this next streak may not even last long enough to be considered a streak.
The problem the MWC has now is that only two teams can end up ranked at the end of the season--TCU and the winner of the Utah/BYU game.
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily true: if Utah beats TCU and BYU beats Utah (and nobody loses to any other teams), you would end up with 3 of them ranked in the top 25 before the bowls. But: if the Utah we saw Saturday against Air Force is the same team that plays against the TCU we saw Saturday against BYU, they have exactly ZERO chance to pull off the upset in Fort Worth. Not sure the BYU we saw Saturday can beat the Air Force we saw Saturday, and certainly not the Utah team that beat the Falcons...
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