It doesn’t take much for a person or organization to make it onto my hit list.
Adam Sandler got there for making “Mr. Deeds.” Kenny Chesney landed there for never taking off his stupid hat. And Mountain Dew? Way too yellow.
Last week, Street & Smith’s Sports Annuals became the latest addition to my list of enemies for its college football preview, in which it ranked BYU ahead of Utah.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my opinion is far from objective; I hate BYU like Boston fans hate the Yankees. But numbers don’t lie, and all the statistics from last season point to Ute dominance in 2006.
Using a foolproof system (note the sarcasm) in which excellence is measured not in numbers but in pretty blue stars, the preview folks at Street & Smith’s ranked aspects of each school’s game.
A good program, for example, would get five stars. A program like Utah State, however, wouldn’t get any. For some bizarre reason, the team down south received an awful lot of stars, even more than the Utes.
Now here’s the real kicker: BYU’s defense received a rating of three stars, but Utah’s offense, the same offense that put up 41 points against the Cougars last fall, received only two.
Could it be that the preview folks didn’t notice that the Cougars’ pass defense finished 104th in the nation, behind such defensive juggernauts as Toledo, Rutgers, Indiana and Delta High School?
BYU’s defense wasn’t even good enough to be awful. Those glorified smurfs made the surrender-happy French army look stalwart. They couldn’t stop payment on a bad check, let alone a collegiate offense.
The author of that particular preview has obviously never watched a single Mountain West game. How else could a person who makes a living writing about sports rank BYU’s pathetic excuse for a defense ahead of Utah’s offense?
Seriously, folks. Brian Johnson led the MWC in total offense; BYU’s defense led the conference in memorable gaffes. Who could forget the afternoon on which the Cougar D let Air Force’s backup quarterback throw a school-record five touchdowns?
Or how about the Las Vegas Bowl? All Bronco Mendenhall’s unit did that fateful night was let a backup fullback throw for two TDs en route to a 35-28 loss.
I can already hear a few Cougar fans starting to grumble in the back row. “The defense will be better this year,” they say. “Bronco will right the ship.”
I’m honored to be the person that gets to burst your collective bubble. Allow me to give you a few reasons as to why this year’s crew will be bad enough to make the 2005 edition look like the Steel Curtain of yore.
First of all, BYU brings back only two starters from last year’s squad. That means the worst defense in the league will place its hopes for a renaissance on a bunch of backups and underclassmen. Call me a pessimist, but I’d hate to be in Bronco’s shoes.
Then there’s the question of size. With a 275-pound nose tackle and Dustin Gabriel, the 198-pound “linebacker,” BYU’s front seven could be the smallest in the country. Good luck stopping the run with that crew.
Finally, Bronco has spent the last few months installing a new defensive scheme, something that virtually guarantees a large helping of blown coverages and mental errors for at least the first half of the season.
The blue ‘ballers, of course, counter this argument by saying that BYU’s tough academic standards attract players smart enough to absorb a new system without any problems. Oh yeah? I watched a BYU student misspell “Brigham,” so there.
You can bet that 2006 will be a long year for Cougar fans, and you heard it here first.
