Media poll rarely on mark

So, the media poll establishes TCU as the favorite to win the Mountain West Conference football crown?

That sits just fine with Utah's Kyle Whittingham, fresh off a BCS bowl win. He'd vote it that way.

BYU's Bronco Mendenhall simply accepts it for what it is, a media poll.

TCU's Gary Patterson feels respected, not that he needed the validation.

In a nutshell, that's the way you'd expect it to play out for what reporters here are calling the Big Three.

The Big Three represent the league's most consistently ranked teams. Air Force is peeking in as a Three Amigo wannabe. The Big Three have all the pub going into 2009. Two of them, the Cougars and Frogs, have returning QBs with veteran experience and bowl experience under their belts.

Patterson has an incredible record in Fort Worth, and he's unafraid to play anyone. When his team isn't respected, he doesn't mind showing it here in Las Vegas, like last year (No. 3). He's respected now and life has returned to normal for his Texans.

Since joining the league in 2005, his team has now been picked No. 1 three times.

Mendenhall takes the preseason polls for what they are: guesses by soda-gulping, chip-dipping sideline prognosticators who are a little less scientific than brooders over global warming. And he's right. In 2006 and 2007, the media picked TCU with 18 first-place votes and BYU went undefeated in the league to sweep two titles; in 2008, his own team on a three-peat quest got a whopping 29 first-place votes and finished third in the final MWC standings.

Whittingham's the kind of guy who relishes the underdog, chip-on-the-shoulder, circle-the-wagons, us-against-the-world role. That way he can get a piece of his players' emotions, play keyboard with motivation.

TCU is favored because the Frogs beat the Cougars and should have had the Utes a year ago. Voters believe the Frogs could stumble in Provo and still come out on top.

"I picked TCU based on how impressed I was with how the Horned Frogs handled BYU last year," said voter Darnell Dickson of the Provo Daily Herald. "That has to be a big advantage going into the 2009 meeting. They also should have beaten Utah."

Voters picked the Cougars second because of senior quarterback Max Hall, who they voted preseason player of the year.

Utah got picked third primarily because of the question mark at QB and worthiness of Brian Johnson's replacement.

It's not brain surgery.

It's also painfully susceptible to being off the mark.

Only three times in 10 years have the local pollsters nailed it. After 2000, the MWC coaches quit submitting polls. The media? It's not that my friends with notebooks are dumb, the task is simply monkeys at buttons.