NCAA Football brigham young Cougars

Blanket Coverage is a weekly rewind of all the action of Week 6, from the big opinions, to the small news, and, of course, coverage of all players named Ju-Ju.

In the second half of Florida's 13-3 win at LSU Saturday night, CBS color analyst Gary Danielson opined that a one-loss SEC team would play in the BCS Championship Game. Danielson's forecast seems fair enough, particularly considering the teams playing in front of him in Death Valley.

The Gators lost one game in both 2006 and 2008 and won the national championship. The Tigers lost two games in 2007 and beat Ohio State in the BCS title game. What Danielson failed to consider, though, was whether a one-loss SEC team with the second-best record in the conference might advance to Pasadena come January.

Unless the NCAA takes the win away, Bobby Bowden just did college football a big favor. His Florida State team beat Brigham Young, knocking out a pretender to the throne.

Then Oregon beat fellow pretender Utah. Now if somebody could dump Boise State, we'll all have a merry Christmas.

That's not likely because the Broncos have already gone unbeaten in their one-game season. It's all over but the routing of San Jose State, Idaho, UC Davis, UC Chula Vista and UC Schwarzenegger.

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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.

Thus killing the dreams of at least one non-BCS upstart. Give the Cougars credit for taking on both Oklahoma and Florida State in the same season, and a year with national title aspirations to boot. That said, welcome to the world of every other major conference program that must deal with several heavyweights each and every year. No need to run to Congress for help after this one.

The Seminoles pulled the upset by taking it to the No. 7 Cougars in their home stadium early and often, surging to leads of 20-7 and 27-14 in the first half before blowing the doors off in the third quarter at one point reaching leads of 44-14 and 54-21 before closing out with the 54-28 victory. BYU is still very much in the BCS picture especially if they can claim the Mountain West crown over TCU and Utah, but their title shot's likely dashed.

The first AP college football Top 25 poll is out, and the rankings are more or less what everyone expected, with Florida a near-unanimous No. 1. But one voter, Doug Lesmerises of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, has a different take on the first weekend of the college football season.

I spent all day Saturday tweeting about college football, and I got some great, thoughtful responses to my tweets from the population of college football Twitter nation. We conversed, 140 characters at a time, about the BYU-Oklahoma and Alabama-Virginia Tech games, and about the woeful performance of my alma mater, Illinois.

Some of the best replies, and my replies to the replies, are in our college football Twitter mailbag below.

Well there's your first major (major!) college football upset, apologies to Boise State. No. 20 BYU upset No. 3 Oklahoma 14-13 on Saturday night as Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford could only watch from the sidelines after getting knocked out of the game with a sprained AC joint in his throwing shoulder. Also sidelined earlier in the week was All American tight end Jermaine Gresham.

Sooners' backup quarterback Landry Jones couldn't get the offense going. Meanwhile, BYU simply went out and won at the end with a methodical late touchdown drive to go up 14-13 with a little over three minutes left. Oklahoma had a final shot but missed a long field goal with about a minute left giving the Cougars their first victory over a top five team since their 1990 upset over No. 1 Miami.

It was the kind of pain that you could feel even through your television set and might've left your remote feeling a little woozy.

BYU linebacker Coleby Clawson had just burst through the Oklahoma line with little more than a pat on the back from the Sooners blockers, bolted himself to Sam Bradford's midsection, and planted the reigning Heisman Trophy winners as deep into a stadium's turf as anyone since Jimmy Hoffa (allegedly) wound up beneath the Meadowlands.

So Bradford rolled. And wriggled. And writhed. And 70,000 Sooner fans watched through their fingers as their golden-armed golden boy finally headed off to the locker room just before the end of the second half.

Bradford would soon be out of his misery. Oklahoma wouldn't be half as lucky.

Most college football coaches seem to prefer easing into the non-conference portion of the schedule before the fun really starts during league play.

But for three Big 12 schools, the start of the season will be anything but a breaking-in period this upcoming weekend.

Missouri and Illinois meet in St. Louis, third-ranked Oklahoma takes on No. 20 BYU in Arlington, Texas, and the marquee matchup features No.13 Georgia at No. 9 Oklahoma State on Saturday afternoon.

Just a few days after the monumental Senate committee hearing on whether the BCS violated antitrust law, the WAC and the Mountain West put pen to paper, extending their deal with the BCS. And by "their deal" I mean the "big six conference and Notre Dame deal" that happens to include all other teams by the magnanimous generosity of the entity known as the BCS. Even if, you know, that entity doesn't actually exist.

Yes, the BCS is like Prince, it's name is an unpronounceable symbol. Or a pronounceable curse word. Later this week, I'm going to do a column where we come up with a symbol to represent the BCS for the 2009 season since it doesn't legally exist. But before we can do that, I have to figure out how to unlock the symbol collection on my keyboard. And let's be honest that could take me months.

In the meantime, the real question to ask here is why did the Mountain West and WAC sign the agreement and has it strengthened or weakened their case against the BCS? Proceed, fearless reader.