BYU has dropped some games that we just had no business losing in recent years. This goes beyond just the Crowton and Mendenhall eras. From Lavell's last year to the present there are a whole host of "thorn-in-your-side" type games. Winning some of these games would not have impacted every overall season, bowl game, ranking, etc. (see 2000 and 2005). BUT some seasons would have seen a large impact (see 2006, 2007, 2011 and 2012). Here is my opinion of games we dropped we should have won or were clear favorites to win with our final record in parentheses:

2000 - SDSU (6-6)
2002 - Nevada, GT, UNM, utah (5-7)
2003 - Stanford, Wyo, utah (horrible goal line snafu call by officials) (4-8)
2004 - BSU, UNLV, UNM (5-6)
2005 - TCU (6-6)
2006 - AZ, Boston College (11-2)
2007 - UCLA, Tulsa (11-2)
2010 - AFA, USU, Utah (7-6)
2011 - Texas, utah (10-3)
2012 - Utah, BSU, ND, SJSU (8-5)
2013 - UVA, Utah (8-5)

There's my assessment with ever so slightly blue-tinted goggles on for 1 or 2 games. I submit that we should have avoided non-winning records in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 altogether. And 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012 and 2013 all could have been significantly impacted by winning these games.

The years glaringly absent are 2001 and 2009. Two words for 2001: Luke Staley. And there isn't much to be said about 2009 when we suffer a beating by FSU and we were pretty much embarrassed by TCU. Despite only 3 losses and a 10-win season in 2008, I concede we flat out got spanked by TCU and yewtah. We should have been more competitive in the bowl game v AZ but c'est la vie.

Now to be fair, what about the games we won that we had no business winning? I think there is only one in that category, maybe 2. UCLA bowl game in 2007 and Oklahoma 2009. yewts would say rivalry games in 2000, 2001, 2006, 2007 and 2009 but I WHOLE-HEARTEDLY disagree. 2000 and 2001 were close but the 2000 game was a result of a bunch FGs that should have been TDs. The 2001 game should have been a blowout IMHO by the Staley/Doman/Mahe machine. In 2006 we were far superior to the yewts and showed it in the first half, then the emotions of the rivalry, crowd, etc. all took over and we let them back in. In 2007 we were set to stomp them out of the stadium as well and we played another unnecessarily close game. We were loaded in 2009 and it shouldn't have been an OT game IMO. Even if you count all 5 rivalry games and the OU and UCLA games and maybe the UW game in 2010 that's only 8 games we shouldn't have won compared to the the 27 or so I've listed that we should have won.

With all that said about the rivalry games those years, let me be abundantly clear: I WOULDN'T CHANGE THE WAY WE WON THOSE GAMES FOR ANYTHING IN THE WORLD!" There's something about having the yewts thinking they've virtually got the W in the bag and then ripping their hearts out in the end. I have friends who are yewt fans who thought they were about to witness another "BYU miracle" in 2010, 2012 and 2013. I defy any yewt fan to tell me honestly that they didn't feel the exact same way.

One last little point: If I had the full tilt BLUE goggles strapped on I'd add USC in 2003 and TCU in 2011. I was at both of those games. The mighty Trojans were dumbfounded to see their team clinging to a slim 3 point lead late in the 4th quarter to lowly BYU. And Riley's mistakes v TCU were ultimately insurmountable despite cutting a 25 pt lead down to 10 late in the game. Sans the horrible mistakes that plagued us that game we upset TCU IMO.