HAHAHA Karma for that one man thats hilarious...Phil Steele is definitely smokin' somethin pretty strong to make him believe the U should be ranked above BYU. Isn't he the same guy that said TCU would be last years BCS Buster and had them in his top 10?

I for one would love to see a top 10 ranked undefeated Utah at 11 - 0 playing a top 5 ranked undefeated Y the last game of the season. It would only help us and our chances to ultimately go to the BCS and NC if the other schools in the MWC step up and make some national noise as well. How much sweeter would it be to thrash them at that point. I know there are plenty who want the U to loose every game and at some level I can understand that but I still think it would be better if they "gulp" are successful as well.

Go Cougs!
L Hatton
Louisville KY

Here you don't give the MWC enough credit. Both UNM and TCU should field pretty formidable teams this year and Air Force is always tough. Utah won't go 7-1 in the MWC. At least one of those three will do more than give them a run for their money. They get TCU at home, but have to play on the road at AF and UNM. Either they go and beat UNM in Albuquerque only to come home and get slapped by TCU, or the opposite happens--the Lobos surprise them and they pull things back together for TCU. Either way, they'll have more than one conference loss at the end of the season.

That said, they could still go to the Las Vegas Bowl as the MWC#2, since we could be Bull Crap Series bowlin' it!

craigoscarson wrote:

Phil Steele

Steele must be smoking nuclear chronic for the blunt to ash under-water. Utah...

If you take away Utah's baffling losses from the last two seasons (36-3 v Boise State, 31-15 at Wyoming, 20-12 v Air Force, 27-0 at UNLV) and they have 10-3 in 2006 and 11-2 in 2007 with wins over Louisville and UCLA. If they had been winning the games their supposed to win (at home or vs lesser foes) then I could see them getting that sort of love. But they didn't win those games, so I have little faith that they will not drop a couple head scratchers again this year. Steele defended his rankings of BYU and Utah here.

He seems to know more about the MWC than most pundits, but I disagree with him here. He based it heavily on the fact that BYU narrowly escaped both of the last games vs Utah, but the thing is that even if Utah had won both of those games they still would have only tied for second place in the conference and BYU still would have won the conference against the same competition. When you look at Utah's body of work it is not nearly as complete as BYU's. Then again our defense is a big ? this year. I think they will play very well, but Utah didn't have as many holes to fill, that is until their whole D-line fell apart. I think Utah SHOULD be good this year, but they SHOULD have beaten UNLV last year, so I am not holding my breath.

I just don't understand sportswriters sometimes. After the last two seasons of the cougars going undefeated in conference play and considering the returning players at key positions, how can anyone not expect BYU to be the top dogs of the MWC.

I know Utah is returning a lot of seniors, but as juniors last year they couldn't beat our key underclassmen; Unga, Collie, Hall, Dulan, etc. What makes Steele think Utah's players can beat them this year when they haven't beaten them the last two.