After Brigham Young’s shocking 14-13 win over No. 3 Oklahoma on Sept. 4, the calls started pouring in to BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall.

Media requests, congratulations from friends and family, and calls and text messages from his coaching colleagues in the Mountain West Conference, most of them filled with only a short and simple ‘thanks.’

‘It was a big-time win for our conference,’ Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. ‘Anytime you get some national recognition for your conference, it’s a good thing.’

The MWC currently has three teams in the Associated Press and USA Today Top 25 polls, two more than the Big East and equal with the Big Ten. The trio of, No. 7 BYU, No. 15 Texas Christian and No. 18 Utah have put the MWC on par with some of the better conferences in the country.

This trend echoes what league coaches have been saying for years.

‘It’s no surprise,’ Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun said of the league’s success. ‘It’s a quality league, and ability-wise, you know there are some special teams in this conference.’

Utah, owner of the nation’s longest active win-streak (16 games), is one of those ‘special’ teams Calhoun is referring to. After defeating Alabama, 31-17, in the 2009 Sugar Bowl to finish off a perfect 13-0 campaign last season, the Utes ranked No. 2 in the final polls.

Despite going through a bevy of off-season changes that included a quarterback change and new coordinators on both sides of the ball, Utah is already off to a 2-0 start this season, winning both of its first two games by at least 10 points.

The squad’s first real test comes this weekend at Pacific 10-opponent Oregon. But Whittingham thinks playing in his conference is preparation enough.

‘We have a lot of quality teams in this league,’ Whittingham said. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind we have three or four teams in here that could play in the Pac-10.’

After the Cougars’ upset last week, TCU handily defeated Virginia on the road Saturday, scoring the first 30 points of the game before giving up two touchdowns in the last five minutes of the game.

Last year, TCU’s defense led the nation with the fewest yards allowed, and this year looks to be more of the same; the Horned Frogs held the Cavaliers’ offense to only seven first downs in the victory.

And fresh off their upset, BYU did not have a letdown in week two, crushing Tulane 54-3 with the help of 527 yards in total offense.

BYU’s jump into the Top 10 of both polls has brought the BCS title game into the conversation, a place a non-Bowl Championship Series team has never been.

‘All we’d like is to be treated like everybody else,’ Mendenhall said on the MWC teleconference last Tuesday. ‘And if it starts to show up in the polls, that’s a great sign. We’re just looking to earn our way to equal access and to be treated the same.’

The teams’ success has also brought into question whether a budding conference like the MWC deserves an automatic bid into a BCS bowl game.

Despite basically needing to finish the season undefeated to be considered in the BCS conversation, MWC teams have more BCS bowl wins in the last three seasons (one) than the Big Ten Conference teams.

‘I think we are definitely making a case for the conference being deserving of automatic-qualification status,’ Whittingham said. ‘What we’ve done in the last few years in particular, relative to our out-of-conference play has been a strong argument for that.’

The MWC made headlines this spring when the conference presented the BCS with a playoff proposal that would make it easier for a team in a non-BCS conference to compete for a championship.

Utah senator Orrin Hatch hosted a Senate hearing this July, in which he beckoned the Justice Department to investigate the BCS, saying it violates anti-trust laws.

Not one for too much discussion about the matter, Whittingham thinks the teams should go out on the field and let their play do the talking for the conference.

‘You can talk about it all you want,’ Whittingham said, ‘but it’s what you do on the field that counts. But I think we’re trending in the right direction, and if we keep playing like we should be playing, there’s no doubt as a conference we’ll be here to stay on the national scene.’

Moving Up

What happened to all the talk about violations and scandal at Michigan? It seems so long ago.

The Wolverines are back in the Top 25.

Bolstered by 310 combined yards of offense and three total touchdowns from true freshman quarterback Tate Forcier, Michigan jumped back onto the national scene Saturday with a 38-34 win over Notre Dame, which dropped from the national rankings after the loss.

And while Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez may be out of the spotlight for another week, the same can’t be said about his counterpart, Fighting Irish head coach Charlie Weis.

Nursing a 34-31 lead with under three minutes remaining, Weis decided to pass on second and third downs, instead of running down the clock, forcing Michigan to use timeouts. As a result, Michigan was left with 2:13 on the clock and two timeouts.

‘I think it was a mistake that they were throwing the ball because they let us save our timeouts,’ Forcier said after the game. ‘Those timeouts definitely came in handy.’

Game to Watch: Texas Tech at No. 2 Texas

The rematch of last year’s classic comes as the two teams had decidedly different off-season fortunes.

While the Longhorns brought back most of their team, including star quarterback Colt McCoy, the Red Raiders lost both stars that connected on last year’s game-winning touchdown: quarterback Graham Harrell and wide receiver Michael Crabtree.

Harrell’s replacement, junior Taylor Potts, has thrown for 861 yards and nine touchdowns in two games this season, both good for the most in college football. But his team will have to face the 100,000-plus that will pack the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on September 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm