I don't think what I'm about to write is revolutionary or anything, and I'm sure others have made similar comments here or on some other thread in the past. That being said, it seems to me that BYU's performance against Michigan does not fit neatly into one category like "we were tired from all the travel and tough competition leading up to the game." I agree with what appears to be most others on this board who believe being tired/beat up from previous games was a factor, and perhaps a large factor.

I think that key in understanding how a decent BYU team could have been beat that soundly by a pretty good Michigan team is realizing that teams only ever play up to a certain percentage of their potential on any given week. If you imagine a college football team's potential being quantified on a scale from 1 to 10, (i.e. a "1" is where a team goes out there and uncharacteristically turns the ball over many times, commits numerous penalties from mental mistakes, bad play calling, etc. and a "10" is basically where the team is firing on all cylinders, little to no mental mistakes resulting in no penalties, play calling is flowing, players not dropping balls etc.) you can start to describe and understand how a game like this years Michigan game happened.

Based on the "potential scale" described above, I would say that BYU put up a "2" in Ann Arbor this year. Conversely, I would say that Michigan put up at "9" that day in terms of its potential. Said in a different but (in my opinion) less informative way; "I don't think BYU could have played worse and I don't think Michigan could have played any better that day." This kind of disparity in the two teams in their performance as it relates to their respective potentials explains why you get a blowout in Ann Arbor this year when the teams are probably pretty close in terms of overall quality/ability. It also explains why teams who are inferior sometimes win (if UNLV puts up a 10 on its potential scale, it may beat UCLA if UCLA put up a 2 on its potential scale). Who knows, if Michigan and BYU had both played at a "7" on their respective "potential scales" perhaps Michigan still wins by a field goal because they have better all around talent, coaching etc. However, the point is, BYU isn't a good enough football team to put up a 1-4 on the potential scale and win very many games on this years schedule (assuming the other team also doesn't put up a 1-4 on the scale).

In other words, this years BYU-Michigan game felt like the opposite of BYU-UCLA 2009.

In my opinion, there are not very many teams who do a better job of playing up to their potential's limit than Boise St. It's almost annoying how consistently Boise St. get 8-10's on their potential scale which results in them beating a lot of teams which may be "better teams" but consistently put out 5-6's on their potential scale.