Mountain West Loses BCS Turf War

What was left of BYU's season sat just above the cast on Dekoda Watson's left arm, a paperback-sized chunk of manicured grass that looked like a divot from Goliath's back nine.

The Florida State linebacker the turf trophy around in front of a small crowd of Seminole supporters in LaVell Edwards Stadium, beaming like an oversized 5-year-old at his first show and tell. Florida State had arrived a seemingly fragile program, looking at a 1-2 start following a heartbreaking loss to Miami in Week 1 and a vague impersonation of a win against Jacksonville State last Saturday.

But over 60 minutes of a 54-28 rout of Brigham Young that likely proved even Utah friendly has its limits, the Seminoles hadn't just ripped their heart out. They'd ripped their turf out, too.

By the time Watson finished his parade, they had literally taken the ground out from under the Mountain West Conference. The Cougars lost the battle, the MWC lost the turf war.

Watson held the proof in his left hand. In a season of 15 weeks, a single day had just ended the conference's BCS hopes.

For the MWC, it was a shockingly quick end to the talk of BCS inclusion that had peppered college football's offseason. Even with the conference's third major power, TCU, still undefeated, it seems unlikely the league will have a chance to return to the scene of its Sugar Bowl triumph, and it's all but impossible they'll improve on it.

All because of Saturday and two second-tier BCS teams that took a baseball bat to the Beehive State, base camp for the MWC insurgency.

A time zone away from the disaster in Provo, Utah, the Oregon Ducks, a team whose wardrobe coordination notes are thicker than their playbook, handed No. 18 Utah its first loss since 2007. And like that, 16 straight Ute wins and 18 straight wins at home for the Cougars became historical footnotes.

"I think Florida State was more prepared in general than we were tonight, really from beginning to end," BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall said after the game. "I think their preparation exceeded ours and it showed."

For a non-BCS team, let alone the face of the premiere non-BCS conference, nothing could be more unforgivable.

Fair or not, the margin for error for non-BCS teams is cheerledear skinny. For the teams on the wrong side of the Big Six tracks, every game is a playoff, if you want to earn a BCS slot. Nevermind that all teams have bad days -- supposed Big 12 power Oklahoma State lost to Houston last week, after all, and LSU won the national title with two losses in 2007 -- as soon as a non-BCS team loses to a big brother squad, they're outed as frauds.

Of course, in BYU's case, that might've been deserved. Two weeks after breaking Oklahoma's will and their quarterback, the Cougars played like they were literally carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders Florida State zipped around a permanently flat-footed BYU squad on offense, while quarterback Christian Ponder carved the Cougars into fine pieces. Coleby Clawson, the senior linebacker who flew around the field against Oklahoma and planted Sam Bradford into the turf like a Heisman-winning flag post, and the usually cateogorically staunch BYU defense yielded more than 500 yards of offense.

Utah, too, likely stood no chance of a second consecutive undefeated season after losing seven starters on offense, including star quarterback Brian Johnson, and second-round NFL draft picks Paul Kruger and Sean Smith on defense, the Utes hardly seemed as intimidating, or as charmed, as last year's edition. Saturday, Johnson's replacement, junior college transfer Terrance Cain, completed less than 50 percent of his passes against Oregon and tossed two fourth-quarter interceptions, failing in the exact sort of situation Johnson managed to bail the Utes out of last year.

And so, the Mountain West, which went before Congress this summer to try and earn a spot at the BCS table, now has only faint hopes of another January appointment.

All that's left for the league is TCU, but without a strong team on its non-conference schedule -- admittedly as much a fault of ACC opponents Virginian and Clemson struggling as the Horned Frogs' scheduling -- and no team inside the league that won't be dismissed by voters, Gary Patterson's club will have a hard time maneuvering around teams like Houston, which already owns a win over Oklahoma State, Boise State, which beat Oregon, or the litany of Big Six also-rans.

Even an undefeated TCU might prove that close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and BCS cronyism.

And so, for the MWC, it's summer of discontent comes to a close with a whimper. The league had even gone so far earlier this year as to go to Capitol Hill to press their case thousands of miles away from their native footprint.

But, as Dekoda Watson walked around with a hunk of Provo in his left paw, it turned out that for at least this year, the Mountain West didn't need to worry about road victories in Washington D.C.

In the end, it couldn't even defend its home turf.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.