I am always more optimistic than the score usually indicates, but i was dead on correct about UConn so there are moments when I guesstimate right. In spite of the loss to Virginia last year, I predicted BYU would defeat Texas in Provo and not just by a few points. I favored BYU by about 7 points as I recall. I remember saying my head told me Texas by 4, but my gut kept telling me BYU by 14. I say this just so you get a feel for what I may think about the game and what I feel. With that in mind, here are my breakdowns and observations of what I expect:

1) Coaching and Game Preparation - I am often most critical of Bronco because this is where I think he gets going in once direction and fails to assess and make contingency plans. Teams have tendencies they follow (yours and the opponent). To win, you have to think like the opponent and figure out your own weaknesses and how the opponent will attack you. Then you have to make plans for handling those "expected" moves and counter them. I think Bronco does a good job of this at times and especially on Defense. I think Anae sucks at it. Nevertheless, BYU might be so good offensively and Hill so confident that Anae's script will not get in the way of a good pre-snap read and substitute play (audible). The staff will I think be prepared and even it they lack depth, flexibility and dimension to their approach as scripted, BYU is just so much better offensively than they were last year, there is no reason to believe they cannot move the ball effectively on Texas.

2) Texas Defense - It looked solid, but against a really raw bunch of barely above FCS level newbies in NTU and at home in Austin no less. There is a really big Delta between what BYU comes with to the table and what NTU brought to the house. BYU will be bigger, stronger, faster and significantly more skilled, not to mention the experience level. Texas scrimmaged last week but probably didn't really learn anything about its defensive team. How could it, NTU returned only one skilled starter and three O-lineman. BYU conversely took on UConn OTR, two time zones east and won handily in spite of UConn returning 10 starters on a Defense that finished 2013 ranked in the FBS top 50. BYU's offense is not NTU. Texas DB's are smallish compared to BYU's receiving corps. BYU has a decided advantage and all the talk of Texas getting physical is fine, but BYU is big enough to physical them all the way back to Bexar County (San Antonio) if they aren't careful.

3) Texas Offense - This gets a bid dicey. You have a line that did not fare very well against NTU when you consider the Mean Green returned only one of their entire front seven (MLB). If anything you have to ask, how did Texas not gain 700 yards, but it barely gained half that many. A 359 total yard outing against a team that only returned 4 starters is pretty bad. In fairness to Texas, the running game is usually the area where teams improve the most from week one to two. The big elephant sized quarterback in the room is how does Swoops really come in and take over a team for which he should be playing Tight End. I don't care what flashy numbers go up, he hasn't shown anyone much in terms of a real full and complete game. Talent and athleticism he has. But he's not Cam Newton. He isn't David Ash. He has upside, but thats a multiple game progress report, not this weeks game. Texas receivers are smallish. In fact this brings me to point #4....

4) Sooner or later (probably later) the fans who are so enamored with the hype and talk about recruiting really need to step back from the Rivals and Scout sites. Every year we see recruiting classes ranked significantly higher than BYU's. Realistically, there is a slight bit of difference between what BYU gets and say most SEC schools, but the delta is minimal. The fact is, the ratings services only see and rate about 1/3rd of the players even offered FBS level scholarships. It isn't that they rate most of the players poorly. It's that they don't see the ones they do not rate and so a lot of 3, 4 and even 5 star athletes get scholarships to universities they dreamed of attending for a decade since pop warner ball and they take those offers and they get 2 or maybe 3 stars unless the guy offering is a Mack Brown, a Nick Sabin, an Urban Meyer or a Les Miles. Stars are hype and they may actually indicate tremendous talent. But they may not. They may represent hype. Speed is a perfect example. MOST teams defend BYU in the deep zones so there is rarely an opportunity for man-coverage and OTT routes to be very successful. Those of you looking for BYU to complete those long Jim macMahon to Willie Gault passes (Bears Championship Team) are going to wait forever. It isn't that BYU has no speed. It's in fact because BYU has tremendous team speed that those stretch-the-field plays don't work for anything long MOST of the time. But speed works in the short routes as well. In any event, BYU gets speed and talent. Recruiting Services do a crappy job evaluating those they don't see and often the are vey wrong. They may represent an educated low ball guess. The ONLY reason the recruiting hype is important is that a lot of coaches with $1.5 million annual contracts and higher have a "recruiting class clause" in their contracts. If you are a head coach that has a good rapport with Rivals or Scout and get a $250k bonus for a very high ranking, you are going to pump up the value of every athlete and all of them will be supermen (until they aren't). Here is a really critical key to winning football and it only begins with recruiting, but it is a far more important part of building a winning program:

TEACH THE PLAYERS TO PLAY FOOTBALL. COACH THEM. CONDITION THEM, TRAIN THEM IN THE FILM ROOM AND ON THE FIELD.

NOT ONE LICK OF TALENT EVER WON A FOOTBALL GAME!

Mental Toughness, the ability to take and inflict pain, endurance, understanding of the mental game, the strategy, the decision making, being prepared to play, having your head in the game, being focused and most important...having all eleven players ON THE FIELD DURING THE GAME FOR EVERY PLAY do exactly this. THAT IS HOW YOU WIN GAMES, SEASONS AND CHAMPIONSHIPS!

It isn't that talent isn't important, but the actual real and un-hyped spread between a great athlete and a good one which is very often much slimmer than you think. Ask some of the coaches that face BYU every year. They will to the man tell you BYU is one of the most talented, most disciplined, best prepared teams in the country MOST OF THE TIME. My problem with Bronco is he distracts the team unnecessarily all too often with minusha that messes with players heads in bad ways. But overall, the man is a great X-O coach. He has fantastic upside if he would just concentrate and focus on football and leave the shaping of young men to their parents, their high example RM teammates, etc. It isn't that Bronco shouldn't be a door open father figure, but that isn't why he was hired. Hes NOT a mission president. He is the head football coach at a Division 1 FBS level program and greatly responsible for the performance of that team OTF and far less of any other duties he might think he has. To be honest I love Bronco. He just frustrates the heck out of me when he gets off-target and unfocused himself.

THIS WEEK BYU should go into Texas, ignore the crowd, take them out of the game, score. My fear is Robert Anae will try and run, run, run right into the teeth of a Texas Defense bent on holding the Cougars to less than 150 yards rushing. If ANAE stubbornly does that, BYU WILL LOSE. If Anae looks at that defense and takes a mix-it-up approach on every down, uses the Y and H receivers like he did against UConn, makes the game fast and furious for the Texas Defense, BYU Wins. BYU has as much or better talent and by far better experience at most positions. I don't care that its in Austin. The field doesn't magically get bigger or longer or the end-zone always shifting to uphill in BYU's direction. Go out, prepare, put the "revenge crap" aside as it's meaningless anyway, be respectful, kick butt, win on their field, come home, prepare for Houston.