BYU vs. UNI

It was a valiant effort. But in the end, You and I just couldn't compete against Brigham Young. He was too much for the two of us (you and I) to handle.

Every time Greg Wrubell referred to "UNI" on Saturday, I couldn't help but think "You and I". Then I had that Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gale song "Just you and I, sharing our love together..." in my head the rest of the day. And when I saw, UNI in print, I wondered if any of their fans thought that ESPN.com's "Uni-Watch" was a feature dedicated to Northern Iowa.

But in regards to the play on the field (instead of the play on words), BYU began their Quest for Perfection with a less than perfect showing. What else would have been expected though? As I prefer to do, I'll say very little of the actual plays, statistics, or game action. I will have more comments on the atmosphere, stadium, etc.

Much of the talk this week is about BYU's relatively inept 3rd quarter where they didn't score and where 2 fumbles led to 2 Northern Iowa TD's. Add 2 other fumbles to that and some fans/media are concerned about upcoming games against PAC-10 teams. Here's my take: BYU's defense was 2 big plays away from pitching a shutout - the long run UNI's QB made to set up the short field goal, and the trick play after Wayne Latu's fumble near the Panther 20-yard line. UNI's only other TD came on Max Hall's fumble in the end zone. So I had no problems with the defense. The offense's big problems were the four fumbles. Two of the fumbles were by backups who will not see much time when a game is on the line, at least when Fui Vakapuna is eligible to play (technically he was eligible, but he hadn't practiced all week due to some academic reasons, so Bronco rightly held him out when he became eligible late-Friday). One of the fumbles was a bad snap while Max Hall was in shotgun. That will get ironed out soon (remember, the center is Dallas Reynolds who is new to the position) and even until it does, it seems like fumbled snaps actually end up as turnovers less than 50% of the time.

The Max Hall fumble is a little more concerning. When I first saw the play live, I thought, "Oh no, here we go again with Hall fumbling the ball on a blind-side hit." Seeing the replay made me realize the fumble was because he had started his throwing motion, not because of ball protection. However, I still can't believe Hall can't be aware of the guys coming, especially when he is standing in the end zone. So that (and the fact that a UNI got that free to hit Hall like that) bother me. The two teams best suited to exploit that weakness are probably UCLA (but their best pass rusher from a year ago graduated) and Utah (thankfully, BYU has some time to fix the glitch).

Overall, I thought the game was about what could be expected. Northern Iowa is decent, but not in BYU's class. Max Hall was very good and Dennis Pitta was awesome, but the rest of the team I thought was pretty average for the opponent.

By the way, how bad were the Cougars' kickoffs this year if one of the game's outstanding performers was Justin Sorensen who had touchbacks on 5 of his 7 kickoffs?

A couple of notes about the stadium:

-On the back of the south scoreboard, BYU has put up a large "Y".This is an awesome addition to campus (that type of "Y" anywhere but the helmets is starting to grow on me) as it can be seen from almost the entire campus. What a great use of blank space.
-On the outside of the west stands (facing the large parking lot and the intramural field) BYU has put up three long banners, each with a word at the bottom (Tradition, Spirit, Honor). One has a photo of Max Hall, one has Jan Jorgensen, and one has Bronco Mendenhall. It's a nice touch. I'll shoot a photo sometime soon and include it in a future post.
-The north endzone now has a video scoreboard. The video screen is smaller than the south scoreboard, but has a more crisp picture. Gone now is the tradition of the entire south stands turning around in unison to watch the replay of a controversial call.
-I knew going into the game that the grass might not look as incredible as it usually has, thanks to a note in Greg Wrubell's blog (about halfway down the page). Greg uses the word "patchy" and I would agree. While most of the grass looks superb, there are a few places where the green isn't quite as brilliant. I'd never noticed this in past season openers, but I have noticed the field seemed wear down more quickly over the course of a season than in year past. It looks like BYU has got an extra 20 years or so out of the grass, though. I'm excited to see what it looks like next year. By the way, I didn't know I'd need to replace my sod every 5 to 7 years. Maybe I'll install field turf.
-The 4:00 start time was perfect for an August game. The temps were pretty hot to start with, but weren't really too bad for most of the game.

So BYU is 1-0, but hasn't really proved much yet. Washington this week should be a pretty good barometer game. I only wish I were going.