Thoughts on BCS, U. & more

Scattershooting around college football immensely enjoying the mucked-up mire the BCS has found itself in with all the one-loss teams making cases for their right to No. 1.

THUMBS UP: To the delight of many college football fans coast to coach, AFA laid the lumber to the sinking Fighting Irish 41-24 for a Notre Dame school-record ninth loss. One of the Haves is now curbside, eliciting pity.

THUMBS DOWN: AP voters for not giving more respect to the MWC. True, there are some dogs in this league for BYU, AFA and Utah to pound on, but what diet does Hawaii feed on? Especially with a majority of games at home? The MWC is the only league with two teams with six-game win streaks not ranked (BYU and Utah) and the only league with an 8-3 team (Air Force) not ranked. Kansas was unranked at the start and now could play for the title.

THEY SAID IT ... Said Kansas Jayhawk QB Todd Reesing, whose team is 10-0 but has yet to have a Big 12 player of the week on offense or defense: "We're just a bunch of regular guys who love to play football. We'd rather have 22 guys that nobody's ever heard of that are winning every game than a few superstars that everyone focuses on."

Um, take that, Rivals.com and Scout.com star recruit rankings.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING: Shutouts help. After blanking Wyoming, Utah ranks No. 5 nationally in scoring defense, with TCU 18, AFA 20th and the Cougars 23rd. AFA is No. 4 nationally in rushing offense, while the Utes are No. 4 in pass-efficiency defense and opponent third-down conversion defense. BYU ranks No. 4 in fourth-down conversions and No. 3 in time of possession.

MY MWC PLAYER OF THE WEEK: BYU linebacker Kelly Poppinga for his pick and a career high 17 tackles against TCU.

DUMB AND DUMBER: Has to go to Wyoming coach Joe Glenn for guaranteeing a Utah win he couldn't back up and Utah coach Kyle Whittingham for converting the Glenn guarantee before Wyoming students into an accountability lesson. This layer of dumbness is trumped by Utah's onside kick leading 43-0 and Glenn's reactive flashing of a junior high-like hand gesture. Emotion and ego upstaging common sense.

AFTER FURTHER REVIEW: Glenn accepted crow. Whittingham admitted it was wrong. On Monday, Glenn's ill-advised hand salute caught on TV got him a reprimand from the league for violating Section 4c of the MWC handbook rule on sportsmanship, which describes bad moves thusly: "Using obscene gestures or unduly provocative language or action toward a game or conference personnel, another institution, a student-athlete of another institution or coach or spectator."