I Say Under-rated by Your System

by Justin Lee

I, like many other cougar fans during the month of August, am sitting at work and can’t stop thinking about the upcoming football season. Well here is the thought of the moment from this cougar crazy mind of mine.

This may not be news to many readers of cougar crazies but, Kirk Herbstreit is a BCS puppet that is doing his best to downplay BYU’s quest to rise above the competition this year.

Let me first point out that while Herb may have the looks of a male model only to be rivaled by those of Fabio and “Hot” Scott H, this only qualifies him as a TV face and not necessarily the most reliable source of college football opinions.

I don’t always disagree with Herb, but that is mostly because he is the counter-part of “Coach” Lee Corso, who in his own right is a few crayons short of a full box. Yesterday, I guess, was a time that any fan of a non-BCS conference team would like to point out that there is undeserved un-love for the “little guys.”

Herbstreit slammed the AP rankings in this ESPN piece as he preceded to give reasons why BYU is overrated and should not eve be talked about as a BCS bowl consideration until, at the earliest, week 9. He continues to point out that Fresno State is a better team then BYU, but even they shouldn't be talked about as the next "Boise State" yet.

The piece starts out by him putting Florida as the #1 team in the country. This is based on returning starters, including the Heisman Trophy winner of a year ago, and their weak schedule for '08.

So let me get this straight. A team should be ranked based on returning starters and how they performed the previous year, and by the possibility of the team rolling through their weak schedule. This is the formula that he uses to give Florida the #1 spot on his list.

Well, like I said before, he is unsound in his arguments. BYU is returning nearly it's entire offensive production that absolutely could not be stopped in conference last year. BYU is riding a ten game winning streak, the longest in the country, and is coming off of two consecutive 11-2 seasons. Florida, by comparison, was 9-4 last year.

BYU has taken hit after hit, as do most non-BCS teams, for it's weak schedule. This is mostly because of the in conference games that they play against such teams as UNLV and SDSU. But as I recall this is a big reason why Herb put Florida atop his rankings.

And my final argument. If you look at Herstreits personal rankings that he submitted to the AP, he has BYU at #20 and Fresno State no where to be seen. So does he really feel this way about BYU, or is he doing as he is told by ESPN. A little controversy can go a long way when it comes to trying to sell a WAC team on a national network like ESPN. Just a thought.