BYU football: Cougars flattered, concerned by ranking

PROVO — When BYU defensive lineman Jan Jorgensen found out his team had jumped from No. 11 into the top 10 of the national rankings — No. 8 in the Associated Press poll and No. 7 in the coaches' poll — he didn't get excited. He didn't celebrate.

"I just got scared, to be completely honest with you," Jorgensen said Monday. "We're a team that's never been here before. I got really worried about how guys on the team are going to take it. ... When I saw that we moved into the top 10, like we did, immediately I didn't really have the chance to enjoy it. I just got worried.

"We've got a very good team, but we've never experienced anything like this before. We're going to have to take it upon us as team leaders to keep everybody humble and ready to play every week. We know we're going to have a target on our back. Teams are going to want to upset the top-10 BYU Cougars."

The next opponent with its sights on knocking off BYU is Utah State. The Cougars (4-0) and Aggies (1-3) meet Friday night at 6 in Logan.

BYU, which enjoyed a bye last weekend, landed in the top 10 for the first time since 2001 thanks to a spate of upsets over the weekend.

"It feels good to get that recognition. But obviously it's something we can't focus on too much," said tight end Dennis Pitta. "We didn't even play this weekend and we moved up four spots. We're fortunate to have this opportunity because other teams lost. There's not a lot we did this week to move up. We're just focused on getting another win and being able to stay where we're at now."

Cougar coach Bronco Mendenhall said he isn't putting much stock in the lofty ranking, adding that the fact his team made such a big jump when it didn't even play "says a lot about the system. It is interesting to me that we can move up without playing a game. I think fundamentally, that's not right. ... We're certainly flattered. But at this point it still has, to me, very little relevance. Maybe after four more weeks or five more weeks, there will actually be a clearer resemblance of who are the best teams in the country."

Mendenhall spent a part of last Saturday watching football games at home with his family. "The general impression was, on any given Saturday, any team is at risk no matter whom they are playing or where," Mendenhall said. "That's the great thing about college football."

Quarterback Max Hall said that he learned important lessons from the teams that were upset last weekend.

"That's the way college football is nowadays. You can't come out lackadaisical in any given week, no matter who you play," Hall said.