So I’m at 5 buck write now (get it!?!) and it’s dead. I wish I could sneak over to a stake center (mmmmm steak!) to watch the end of priesthood session. Anyway what a great week to be a BYU fan.

We all know the obvious reason. The Cougs have a complete team effort and defeat TCU handily in the most important game of the season. The fact that TCU was ranked, we had to play in Ft. Worth, a short week, it was the first MWC game, as well as conference’s best team (besides us) who happened to be defending conference champions, all made this win so sweet. And to you “fans” who thought we would choke, victory is much more sweet when you are a loyal fan, rather than “thinking” you’re team will lose then being happy but wrong when they win.

The other thing is, the final score from Rice-Eccles Stadium: Boise State Smurfs: 36 Freakin’ Utes: 3 It was 10-3 Boise State when I switched over to conference. I switched it back, and I saw that score (36-3) and I laughed my head off. Top-25 monkey successfully transfered!

It proves what I’ve been saying all along this season: (OK, OK, so I’ve been saying it ever since I knew what the U of U was) Utah has a bad football team. Ratliff was 5/21 for 30 yards and 3 interceptions. To throw for 30 yards on 21 attempts, and complete less than 25% of your passes? Wahahahahahahahahahahaa! (If you guys remember in the Tulsa game, Beck only missed 5 passes on 21 attempts) Then they brought in Tommy Grady so that they could have another interception, that’s what he’s done in games against good opponents when they bring him in. Together, they were 8 for 27, 52 yards and 4 interceptions.

I remember a Ute fan in my ward, a couple of weeks before the season started, gushing about how good they were going to be. I couldn’t let it pass, (neither could the Utah QB’s, ohhhh!) so I started arguing with her. She said, “Utah has 3 good quarterbacks.” Just to be contradict her and rile her up, I replied “Utah has 3 bad quarterbacks” Even as I said it, I didn’t quite believe it. I did know Johnson was still kinda hurt, Grady had to be overrated, and Ratliff wasn’t as impressive as everyone thought he was, but my accurate assesment of how I felt would have been “3 mediocre QB’s” Looks like what I said was a little more accurate.

The teams that Utah beat (1-AA Northern Arizona doesn’t count) don’t have a win between them. We’ll see what shapes up, but the friggin’ Utes might be going to the toilet bowl this year.

While we were waiting for the BYU/TCU game, Shirts and I discussed a few different topics relating to the game and to football in general. At one point I began to wonder… Who has the ugliest uniforms in college football today? What about of all time? (Or at least recent history, since I don’t really want a discussion on early 1900’s football with leather helmets and such.) Much has been said about Nike’s experimentation with Oregon, which is why I’ve added that picture. It’s not because they are or aren’t the worst. I want to hear from you all. Who takes the the Ugly Uniform awards? (Names for the award(s) may also be suggested.)

The ol’ cliche about a win being a team effort definitely applies, but some players definitely stood out more than others in taking TCU out back of the woodshed.

Justin Robinson. I am appeased. Robinson had several pass break-ups in this game and never let his receiver get by him. All that against the fastest team on the schedule AND on four days’ rest after spraining his knee. With emphasis.

John Beck. One of the gutsiest performances by a quarterback that I have ever watched. Having walked around on a sprained ankle myself, I can’t imagine how Beck was running around on two of them and throwing a football. His arm strength was on major display last night because he didn’t step into a single throw last night. He was just flicking the ball 40 yards downfield on a rope. It was awesome. Hit all his big third downs and made every play that needed to be made. I can’t imagine how sweet the vindication must taste to him this morning.

Michael Reed. You could tell right away that he was jacked up to play in front of his family and friends. He came in and made big catch after big catch. Let’s hope he enjoyed it enough to keep playing like that the rest of the season.

Curtis Brown. No big stats, just hard runs that took the pressure off Beck. Also had several big catches for first downs. His blitz pickups were also huge.

The Linebackers. Several linebackers made big plays in this game. David Nixon put a whoop on Ballard that caused the fumble in the red zone. Biggest play of the game, right there. General Jensen picked off a ball that effectively ended the game before it was really over. Bryan Kehl was all over the field and had a couple of really nice tackles-for-loss. The linebackers rendered Aaron Brown all but useless, holding him to a paltry 49 yards rushing.

Honorable mentions go to McKay Jacobsen, for some big catches while wearing a DB on his back, and the D-line for getting a good enough pass rush to disrupt several plays and keep Ballard off balance. Coach Patterson said before the game that TCU wanted to throw the ball less than 30 times and run the ball effectively. Ballard ended up with 49 attempts. Kudos to the defensive front for getting TCU completely out of their game plan.

Another pretty solid week for all players. By way of full disclosure, I discovered one tiny math error that I had made in Week 1 and had to subtract one point from Hornblower’s overall (sorry bro!). The new spreadsheet is making this much easier and accurate from here on out.

Standings after 5 weeks:

goldenspidey: 25(89)
Shirts: 26.5(88)
bsum1: 22.5(80.5)
golfingpirate14: 26.5(76.5)
hornblower24: 24(70.5)

 Keep checking back today for the official handing out of the game balls to the most worthy players from last night’s statement win.

I just wanted to take a moment to commemorate the completed transfer from the old Blogger blog to this newer Wordpress one. I witnessed the transferring of the Pick ‘em scores to an Excel file. (It uses some major formulas in the cells, but they all make sense - unlike a certain college-football thing we all know-and-hate.) Then I was made witness to the somewhat-troublesome former blog’s destruction.
Now for a moment of silen… that’s enough.