Consider how BYU has all but been out of any national view for practically the entire month of October. After concluding September with a road victory in Albuquerque, the Cougars followed a bye with a 24-14 win at UNLV in a game that started at 9:30 p.m. Eastern and was the next-to-last game played on the national schedule that Saturday. Then there was last week's 42-7 expected romp at home over Division I-AA's Eastern Washington, and now another off week with the postponement of Saturday's game to the first weekend of December.

That's two of four October weekends off and two victories — one a post-primetime affair and the other against a few-who-care opponent.

Meanwhile, pushing back the BYU-SDSU game to Dec. 1 for understandably appropriate reasons means the crowning of the Mountain West Conference champion and the determining of at least one or two of the league's bowl berths might get pushed back into December.

Prior to this week's postponement, the most ardent Cougar fan would predict BYU to run the table and finish undefeated in conference play, while the most ardent Ute fan would counter with Utah finishing strong, BYU stumbling against either TCU or Wyoming, and the Nov. 24 BYU-Utah game in Provo being played for the league crown.

With conference play not complete until the Dec. 1 game, the championship implications that could rest on what would have been a Cougar-Ute regular-season finale might not be decided until the week after.

Consider the possibilities going into the Nov. 24 game. A one-loss BYU team getting beat by a two-loss Utah team means both have two losses with the Cougars headed to San Diego. Or a two-loss Utah team hands BYU its first conference loss, with a second loss possibly coming the following weekend in San Diego.

The prolonged results could spill over into the Mountain West's four bowl selections, with three of the four postseason games being played three weeks or less after the Dec. 1 BYU-SDSU game.

The first selection goes to the Las Vegas Bowl (Dec. 22) and the second to the San Diego Poinsettia Bowl (Dec. 20), with the New Mexico Bowl (Dec. 22) and Armed Forces Bowl (Dec. 31) to negotiate over the final two teams.

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A look at current MWC leaders

                                                                                                                    Team (overall, MWC)	This week	Nov. 3	Nov. 10	Nov. 17	Nov. 24	Dec. 1

                                                                                                                    
BYU (5-2, 3-0)	 — 	CSU	TCU*	at Wyo.	Utah	at SDSU
                                                                                                                    
Air Force (6-2, 5-1)	at UNM*	Army	at N. Dame	SDSU	— 	— 
                                                                                                                    
New Mexico (5-2, 2-1)	AFA*	at TCU	CSU	at Utah	UNLV	— 
                                                                                                                    
Utah (5-3, 2-2)	at CSU	— 	Wyo.	UNM	at BYU	— 
                                                                                                                    
Key: * denotes Thursday night game. All other MWC teams have two losses and have sub-.500 conference records.

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E-mail: taylor@desnews.com