Football can be a cold partner, a cruel paramour, one minute befriending and blowing kisses at you, holding you in warm embrace, the next punching you in the mouth and knocking you out. Sometimes, it’ll accompany and kiss and embrace you, then punch you in the mouth and knock you out in consecutive weeks.
Why?
Because that’s what football sometimes does.
And that’s what BYU, last week’s loser, is facing in the days ahead. It had best shake off any lingering despair and despondency, any somberness and self-pity in preparation for what’s next.
For all the work the Cougars have put in this season, all the progress they have made, all the attention and recognition they’ve received, all the acclaim they’ve garnered, so much of all that now dangles up on a high wire, delicately teetering back and forth on the results of Saturday’s game at Arizona State.
If BYU wins, it will likely qualify for what only the Cougars could have imagined for themselves before the season started — a slot in the Big 12 championship game. That, ironically enough, also depends, in part, on what their friends at Utah do against Iowa State at Rice-Eccles Stadium later in the day. If the Cougars lose, after all the good stuff they’ve achieved, they’ll fall into a mass of other conference teams with similar league records, teams that were fairly accomplished, but nothing special. There would be other extenuating circumstances to consider at that point, but all of it tangled in a mess of which BYU wants no part.
As we speak, the Cougars are on top of their world, sitting not only tied with Colorado for the best record in the Big 12 (6-1), they also have the best overall record (9-1), even after last week’s lapse against Kansas. Colorado is 8-2.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Brigham Young Cougars run onto the field ahead of the game against the Kansas Jayhawks in Provo on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024.
In league standings, after BYU and the Buffs, ASU lurks at 5-2, alongside Iowa State. Which is to say, if the Cougars lose to the Sun Devils, and then each of them wins their final regular-season game, BYU at home against Houston and ASU at Arizona, the Devils would hold the tiebreaker for having beaten the Cougars head-to-head.
If BYU loses to ASU, beats Houston, and ASU then loses to Arizona, the Cougars could still qualify for the title game against Colorado, assuming the Buffs keep their current four-game win streak alive against Kansas and then Oklahoma State.
If Iowa State beats Utah on the road, then beats Kansas State at home, and BYU loses its two final regular-season games, and ASU loses either of its last two games, the Cyclones would be in against Colorado, if the Buffs take care of their business.
If Colorado loses to Kansas and Oklahoma State, unlikely though that is, considering what Kyle Whittingham so happily said after the Utes lost to CU, namely that the Buffs are the best team his guys have faced all season (including you slugs down in Provo with, at present, the better overall record), then blow this whole column up and we’ll reconvene later on.
Bottom line is, this game against Arizona State is huge for BYU.
No matter what happens, the Cougars will finish with a better record than most anyone expected this season. But even so, they’ve set themselves up for colossal disappointment by so dramatically rising above expectations, shoving those expectations upward along with them, and then dropping out of championship game qualification or putting it in peril now.
They’ve brought the pressure that accompanies them to Tempe on Saturday straight and squarely on themselves. Consecutive losses to Kansas and ASU would blow a hole in the side of the rocket they’ve been riding since September.
Those pregame chants led by Kalani Sitake and repeated back to him by his players with such enthusiasm and conviction in the locker room: “They don’t know, but they’re about to find out! … They don’t know, but they’re about to find out!” will reverberate back into their own ears with great frustration and regret, if the Cougars ultimately were the ones who didn’t know and were about to find out.
It’s up to them, then, to live up to their own creation now, to carry the weight of their own expectations, to play with what they lacked at home against Kansas — smart play-calling and poised execution. Were they talented enough to beat the Jayhawks? Yes. Were they calm and collected, composed and confident enough to do so? Everyone knows the answer to that.
Sitake said this week that he’s looking forward to playing the Devils. Is his team?
If it performs against hot Arizona State on the road as mistake-plagued, as shook as it did on Saturday night at home against Kansas, the very same game that had been befriending and blowing kisses at the Cougars and holding them in warm embrace will be throwing haymakers at them and knocking them out.
Why?
Because that’s what the cold partner, the cruel paramour does, what football does, if you let it.
