Stats add fuel to hot BYU debate

The 2007 BYU football team met for the final time Wednesday to give out awards at the program's annual private banquet.

Rob Morris, Chad Lewis, Jason Buck and other current and former NFL Cougars handed out awards that included the 2007 MVP (running back Harvey Unga) and defensive MVP (Bryan Kehl).

When it was over, the team captains gave coach Bronco Mendenhall a special pair of Nikes. A strap on each shoe carries the embroidered words, "Magic Happens."

"I look forward to wearing these on the practice field on Monday," Bronco said.

That's right, the 2008 BYU football team begins spring practice Monday, but before we launch pell-mell into obsessing about next fall, let's take a cue from the awards banquet and hit the pause button on March Madness, just for a moment, so we can clear up some unfinished business.

See, we still don't know which football team was better, the 2006 Cougars or the 2007 Cougars.

Both teams finished 11-2. John Beck's team was ranked 15th and 16th in the two major polls while Max Hall's bunch was 14th in each.

So, which version was better, BYU.06 or BYU.07?

For an answer, I turned to statistics professor Shane Reese, who has consulted for the Philadelphia Eagles and recently turned down an offer to join their front office.

Reese and a former co-worker at Los Alamos, Todd Graves, (yes, this is rocket science!) created the Graves-Reese College Football Rankings. They've analyzed every season from 1960 to the present on a scale that allows us to compare teams from different years.

The idea was to see if the 1984 BYU National Champions deserved their title.

They did, Reese found, but they also had the lowest score of any national champion.

Until last year.

"2007 was a bad football season," Reese said.

First, some context. The best ever Graves-Reese score was Notre Dame's 4.17 in 1988. The system rewards teams who beat quality opponents and takes into account where the games are played, at home or on the road.

Now, back to 2007. Kansas was the Graves-Reese Rankings national champ with a score of 2.35. BCS champion LSU scored 2.25.

The best BYU scores are:

1984 2.65