BYU has one of the 10 best collegiate football teams in the nation - at least if the pollsters are right.
The Cougars, for the first time this season, cracked the top 10 - at No. 10 - in both the AP and CNN/USA TODAY polls released Sunday. And now there's even talk of the Cougars being a candidate for the bowl alliance (see story on Page D3).The Rice Owls certainly left Cougar Stadium believing BYU was deserving of the lofty rank. The Cougs pasted the Owls 49-0. Rice played WAC Mountain Division leaders Utah and BYU on back-to-back weeks and came away thinking there was no comparison between the two.
"BYU is 10 times better than Utah," was how Rice defensive end Ndukwe Kalu put it.
The Cougars will find out if that's really the case when they face the Utes Nov. 23 in Rice Stadium. That instate battle will determine the WAC Mountain Division representative in the league title game.
BYU, now 10-1 overall and 6-0 in the WAC, has a game late Saturday night against Hawaii on the islands. Regardless of whether the Cougars win or lose against the lowly Rainbow Warriors, however, the winner of the Utah-BYU game will go to Las Vegas for the inaugural WAC championship game Dec. 7.
No wonder some players and fans were chanting, "beat Utah, beat Utah, beat Utah," while celebrating on the field immediately after BYU's first shutout victory in four years Saturday afternoon.
Cougar coach LaVell Edwards and several players credited the outstanding defense against the previously potent running attack of the Owls to the preparation by the scout team. Walk-on Cougar quarterback Tim Dickman, who ran the option in his California high school, gave the Cougar defense a good test during the week leading up to the battle against Rice.
Dickman "ran the option well in practice - better than we saw from Rice's two quarterbacks out there," said Cougar linebacker Shay Muirbrook.
"Tim Dickman did a great job getting us prepared," said Edwards. "That was the best work by a prep offensive we've had in some time."
Rice, after averaging 458 yards rushing in their previous four games - all wins - managed only 119 against the Cougs. And they didn't complete a single pass.
"At least they respected us enough to prepare for us," said Rice coach Ken Hatfield.
The Cougar rushing attack was the other big story. BYU had 542 yards of total offense, with 323 of those coming on the ground. The Cougars nearly had two 100-yard rushers, as freshman Ronney Jenkins broke the century mark with 109 yards and junior Brian McKenzie just missed with 97 and a pair of scores on just 12 carries.