- BYU football starts Big 12 play against Colorado after a 3-0 start.
- Unlike Utah, BYU isn't highly hyped, which could benefit them in conference.
- Coach Kalani Sitake is optimistic about BYU's progress and upcoming performance.
PROVO — Exactly like its heated rival, the BYU football team essentially breezed through a soft nonconference portion of the schedule.
Just like Utah, the only obvious fact learned from the three games is the Cougars were vastly superior to the competition. The series of real tests begins this week with the start of Big 12 play against Colorado.
For BYU's sake, let's hope the comparisons with Utah end there. The Utes smothered all three weak nonconference opponents, in the process raised expectations and then failed to meet them in the first conference game.
National media, as it is prone to do with Kyle Whittingham's highly regarded program, lavished praise upon the Utes to the extent of anticipating their place in the 12-team national playoff. One commentator went so far as to say Utah would get a top-three seed, which would include hosting a home playoff game.
During Utah's 43-10 thrashing of UCLA in the Rose Bowl last month, FOX commentator Matt Leinart called Utah quarterback Devon Dampier a dark horse Heisman Trophy candidate and compared him to Kyler Murray. The Arizona Cardinals starting quarterback, Murray won the Heisman and was picked first in the NFL draft.
Speaking to the partisan audience, former Utah coach Urban Meyer emphatically declared on Saturday's FOX pregame show that: "Utah wins the Big 12 championship and Kyle Whittingham gets another ring."
Meyer and his FOX counterparts spent two days on the Utah campus pumping up the team's offensive line, which Whittingham had repeatedly labeled as possibly the best in his 21 years as the head coach. Recognizing the season is still young, the experts might want to walk back all the hype.
As a national television audience witnessed, the Utes failed to match the love. Texas Tech ignored all the hoopla and demolished Utah last week at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The Red Raiders are now the recipients of all the premature attention.
BYU also starts conference play on a high, believing the team is capable of at least matching last season's success that finished in a four-way tie for first play.
Complicated tie breakers in the 16-team conference left the Cougars out of the championship game, but they humbled Colorado with an impressive Alamo Bowl win.
But BYU differs from Utah in flying more under the national radar, a fact that could be viewed as a plus. Unlike the Utes, who soared into the top 25 after the season opener in the Rose Bowl, BYU needed to go 3-0 before cracking the rankings at the last spot.
Another difference is the level of competition. The Cougars will open on the road against a Colorado team that lost multiple players to the NFL and isn't nearly the caliber of Texas Tech.
Utah can spin the loss playing poorly against a front-runner, which is now the highest-ranked Big 12 team at No. 12 in the Associated Press, to win the conference championship. Colorado already has suffered two losses, including one in the conference to a Houston team that was 4-9 last season.
The Cougars are coming off their most complete game of the season going on the road to beat East Carolina. Freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier played his best game, throwing for 246 yards and one touchdown.
"Excited about our team and the progress that we're making," head coach Kalani Sitake said. "Hopefully we can give it our best shot when we get out there Saturday night."
A sidenote to Utah's loss, in answering a question about Dampier's health during his weekly press conference Monday, Whittingham said the quarterback barely practiced last week. Dampier said he was fine after practice on Monday; but either way, the Utes desperately need a capable backup like Texas Tech had last Saturday.
"It definitely impacted him, but if you're out there you've got to get it done," Whittingham said.
