BYU football: TCU still has a couple of hurdles en route to BCS

PROVO — So how does the Bowl Championship Series road look now for TCU after the Horned Frogs' 38-7 road rout of BYU?

The Frogs sport a 7-0 record and join Utah atop the Mountain West standings with the only unblemished league marks, both at 3-0.

More importantly, eighth-ranked TCU maintains pace with fourth-ranked Boise State in the BCS equation despite coming from non-BCS conferences that don't have automatic berths in the biggie bowls for their league champs.

And other undefeated teams are not proving themselves totally invincible, given that the likes of Florida, Alabama, Texas and Iowa have each logged narrow victories by three points or fewer the past two weekends.

After trouncing the 16th-ranked Cougars, TCU faces the following remaining games: at home against UNLV, at San Diego State, at home against ranked Utah (in a game the Frogs hope to avenge a narrow loss to the Utes last year in Salt Lake City), at Wyoming and at home against New Mexico.

Meanwhile, Boise State's remaining schedule has only two teams with winning records — Nevada and Idaho, and the former broke over .500 Saturday with a 70-45 drubbing of the latter Saturday.

While the Broncos have an easier road with relatively weaker opponents the rest of the way, the Frogs are hoping that pollsters give their tougher remaining schedule more credit.

And perhaps, as TCU coach Gary Patterson was pitching in his postgame comments Saturday night, this is the year that the BCS affords bowl berths to two non-BCS teams — both Boise State and TCU, if they finish undefeated.

With 10 slots available and the two in ranked in the top eight, the basic math at the present time seems to give credence to such thinking.

e-mail: taylor@desnews.com