Pressure on defenses in MWC

Something's gotta give.

When you have college football teams abandoning smash-nose offense, giving way to the spread and the pass, it's going to take a toll on defenses.

Take that many shots at a defense and a few of them are bound to stick.

Defensive coordinators are becoming more and more the Rodney Dangerfields of the college game. They've got to bring pressure, yet they danged well better cover the other team's receivers. Give a decent opposing quarterback too much time and your defenders are on the autopsy table.

It will be more so this year in the Mountain West Conference with so-called sophisticated spread passing games installed at Wyoming, New Mexico and San Diego State with new coaches, who vow to be more explosive. They may not have the personnel to pull off big numbers the first year, but if a team can hit home runs, they'll never be out of a fight.

Remember these names: Dick Bumpas, TCU; Jaime Hill, BYU; Kalani Sitake, Utah; Rocky Long, SDSU; George Barlow, UMN; Larry Kerr, CSU; Tim DeRuyer, AFA, and Dennis Therrell, UNLV.

They're the defensive coordinators of the MWC. Sort of like their counterparts in the Big 12 and Pac-10, they've got plenty on their desks. The films they study are Friday the 13th material.

They're members of the Sunday Tylenol Club. They might want to start a beer summit.

While BYU receives a lot of praise by prognosticators for returning senior quarterback Max Hall, tight end Dennis Pitta and running back Harvey Unga, don't count out UNLV's Omar Clayton and Ryan Wolfe, the duo that embarrassed Arizona State last year.

Good QBs can inflict damage. Great QBs can perform lobotomies.

Defensive coordinators are left in the lurch these days in the college game.

No more fretting all week on how to stop the sweep, dive and power play off tackle. Now, it's duck and cover the terminal point of your spine.

The Big 12 is a prime example.

The offenses in this league have morphed from cleats and a cloud of dust to big-play quarterbacks tossing darts to big, tall, fast wideouts who gobble up turf. Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Texas and Oklahoma State lead the way with big number-producing offenses including Sooner Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford.

The result? Big 12 defenses, at least statistically, absorbed the fallout from the NCAA's top passers, No. 1 Bradford, No. 3 Colt McCoy, No. 8 Graham Harrell and No. 10 Chase Daniel.

Texas had the best total defense in the Big 12 in 2009 and ranked No. 51 nationally, giving up 342 yards a game. The next best was No. 55 Nebraska, followed by No. 68 Oklahoma, No. 78 Colorado, No. 79 Texas Tech, No. 85 Baylor, No. 93 Oklahoma State and No. 98 Missouri.