Sorry for the lack of a Tuesday Tidbits. I was still too sickened (by the two-minute lapse in concentration that resulted in a 17-point swing and ultimately cost BYU the game...) to go back and sort through the stats for interesting trends.
Today, I am waffling on something that I have mentioned before: the Holy War. I personally do not feel that either team NEEDS the game to be played. Utah proved last season that it needs to schedule more free wins after it's 4-5 Pac 12 record. [Insert joke here about BYU being a free win for the Utes.] BYU proved again last Saturday that they are not capable of playing its usual type of football against Utah. Last year it was the 7 turnovers. This year it was the 12 penalties and the fumble turned Utah TD and the residual TD Utah scored b/c BYU pouted instead of manning up.
Utah will almost never be ranked by the 3rd week of the season. It just won't happen very frequently. I think it's only happened twice in their history, but maybe I'm mistaken and it's 3 times. Yet, in the rivalry game, even a ranked and obviously better BYU team struggles against Utah (see 2009, 2006, 2001, I'll leave 2012 as an open debate for now). The cost of the loss is much worse than the benefit from a win. If BYU wins, they beat the 5th-8th best Pac 12 team. But, because of the rivalry, the chances of losing to Utah are much higher than they are against the other 5th-8th best Pac 12 teams. Utah has figured out the key to beating BYU: just don't screw up and wait for BYU to make fools of themselves.
Both teams are near capacity on average for their home games, so they don't need the boost in attendance that comes from playing the game. Both teams are playing good teams, so they don't need the additional quality opponent. Utah would like to replace BYU with teams it can beat more easily, like Utah State (haha), to ensure that even on a down or rebuilding year they have an easier time making a bowl game. Assuming BYU can schedule games against teams like Georgia Tech or the Arizona schools, (i.e. teams equal to Utah in terms of quality, but that won't "get up" for the BYU game as much as Utah does), then they could easily look to replace Utah on the schedule.
Now, I don't believe this is the case for BYU. I don't think BYU will be able to continue to get quality games to replace Utah. In this regard, I think BYU needs to try to push forward with it. But I don't like it. The cost and risks are too large and the reward is too small for BYU, but for Utah as well. Take this year for example, Utah beat a ranked BYU team and everybody in the country that saw any highlights from the weekend knows it. Yet, Utah barely moved up at all in the polls, and, in fact, is behind BYU is one of the polls. If Utah had lost the game, they would have no chance to be ranked again the rest of the season.
Not to mention the frustration BYU fans feel in watching the Cougars revert back to dumped teenage girl from Sandy status (see my post 3rd quarter rant from Saturday night: http://mo-knows-sports.blogspot.com/2012/09/3-quarters-in-im-done-again.html).
i thought i was emotionally over the loss until i read your post. "thanks" mo.
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