Altitude should help with range, but it won't help with accuracy, and the differing characteristics of the ball in flight may well interfere with accuracy when moving from altitude to sea level, or vice versa. It's the idea that a 40 yard FG shouldn't be a problem that needs to be adjusted, real college kickers don't hit from that distance consistently.

As you get inside the closer the percentage goes up, but the rewards of converting the first down correspondingly go up. You have to get to the five yard line before percentages cross 90%, and kicking a field goal from the five and in only makes sense if it's a game-winner.

I've taken a look at games under Bronco (05-12) that were decided in part by field goals--games in which the field goals taken by both sides could conceivably have changed the outcome of the game, with no changes outside the outcome of the FGA themselves. There were 22 such games, BYU should have gone (using D1A average from my analysis of 2006 play-by-play) 12-10 in those games, and in fact went 13-9. Only eight of those games had an expected winning percentage (based on average kicking) between 20% and 80%, and of those games we lost one game we "should" have won (Utah 2012 [62%], only a "should" win because of the FG retry), and only won one game we "should" have lost (UNM '09 [22%]). The extra win comes from the cumulative percentages, we've won a bunch of 50-75% expected games (UCLA '07 [74%], SDSU '10 [63%], Tulsa '11 [57%], Utah '06 [51%]) and lost very few in the 20-50% range (BC '06 [47%], TCU '05 [21%]).

So while we can all remember the game-winning FGs that failed, as most game-winning FGs do, we've actually done slightly *better* than expected in FG battles. But the goal needs to be avoiding FG battles in the first place. Bronco has won *every game* where we scored more touchdowns, and lost *every game* where our opponent scored more touchdowns. Don't settle for FGs in the first place, and you're less likely to need a game-winner at the game end. The last time we visited Texas, we were 3/3 on field goals, but we kicked on 4-6 at the 13, 4-3 at the 16, and 4-3 at the 15. If we go for it on all three situations and convert two of them, we likely win the game. Maybe the Heaps-led offense of 2011 isn't up to that task, but Taysom Hill's offense certainly should be.