Just gearing up for rivalry week with a little abuse of the Yewts...cant wait for the big game next week.

[clears throat and taps on podium]

Yewtah has squandered a historic opportunity this year. They were given the easiest conference schedule of any PACX team in (at least) the last 14 years, and theyve blown it. The road to the conference championship game was handed to them on a silver platter an opportunity that they almost certainly will never see again and they've completely screwed it up so far.

All they had to do was beat a conference schedule not much more difficult than theyd faced in the MWC, and theyd have won the south division and gone to the championship game. Now, mathematically, it's still possible for them to back into the championship game, but they are going to need some help from some schizophrenic conference mates, when they could have easily controlled their own destiny.

Ive been listening to Utah sports talk radio the last few weeks and Ive heard a lot of blather about the Yewts great conference schedule and how its sooooo much better than BYUs current schedule. Now, dont get me wrong; I partly agree with that. I would much rather have BYU in the PACX than independent, or in the Beast or Big XII for that matter. So chalk this up to jealousy, if you must. That said, there are a few glaring issues that the talking heads seem not to be harping on incessantly (like they do with BYUs schedule or depth at QB or other really deep topics):

1. Yewtah doesnt play the two best PACX teams this year.
2. The rest of the PACX sucks.
3. The Yewts 2011 schedule isnt appreciably tougher than theyve faced in the MWC.

Whether by design or accident, Yewtah was given a schedule without Stanford and Oregon this year. Personally, I dont think it was an accident. IMHO, its likely the PACX brass feel the need to justify the invitation of Yewtah and Colorado, so it was in their best interest to show that these new teams are competitive additions to the conference, not deadweight, little-sister, money-sucking, parasitical, bar's-closing-and-I-don't-wanna-go-home-alone-maybe-I-can-leave-the-lights-off last-choices. Colorado is hopeless, so Yewtah was their only hope to have any semblance of a respectable debut performance, especially with a bit of creative scheduling to give them a leg up.

Now the rest of the Yewts schedule serendipitously turned out to be monumentally sucky this year. For whatever reason, the other PACX teams synchronized their down cycles this year, like a bunch of sulky, bitter coeds sitting at home on Friday night, dateless yet again. Cal is at a ten-year low. UCLA is in disarray, blowing through its 2nd-worst season since 1999. Arizona? Worst season since 2003. Oregon State? Worst since 1997. Colorado is having a fire-the-coach-and-burn-down-the-stadium type of season; they havent been this bad since Reagans first term. Only ASU and Washington are having fairly average PACX seasons, but even ASU is in the middle of a pathetic meltdown, which could very well cost their coach his job.

USC is the only above average team this year (though well below their lofty standard of the last ten years). However, USC isnt eligible for the title this year, so although the Yewts had to play them this year, they didnt even have to finish ahead of them. 2nd-freaking place would have been enough for the Yewts to win the South Division.

Just to illustrate how unprecedentedly sucky the Yewts' conference schedule was, here are the Sagarin ratings for the PACX teams so far this year. For reference, the average Sagarin rating for the PACX teams since 1998 has been 78.0.

95.3 Oregon
90.6 Stanford
83.9 Southern Cal
79.9 Arizona St.
77.2 Washington
75.4 California
71.4 UCLA
67.5 Washington St.
66.4 Arizona
62.6 Oregon St.
61.2 Colorado

Yewtah has had to play only the bottom nine teams in that table. The average Sagarin rating of the Yewts opponents? An anemic 71.3. That is the weakest rating of any PACX team's conference schedule since 1998 (thats as far back as I have Sagarin data). And its not even close. The next weakest schedule was Stanford and Oregon in 1999 at 72.5 (that was the year that an 8-4 Stanford team won the weak PAC10, while laying a turd out of conference, losing to San Jose State and getting nuked 69-17 by a five-loss Texas team). If you look at a scatter plot of the SoS ratings since 1978, the Yewts 2011 schedule is an extreme outlier; most are clustered around the average of 78.0. Only 3 of the 143 schedules even fell below 73.0.

Now, if you note that Yewtah didnt even need to beat USC this year, since the Trojans are on probation, you can effectively remove that game from their schedule. They could have sent the Chi Omega flag football team down there to take on the Trojans and it wouldn't have affected their chances to win the South Division one bit. Without the USC game mattering, their SoS drops to 70.2.

To put this schedule in MWC terms, overall the Yewts 2011 PACX schedule is the rough equivalent of the Yewts 2009 MWC schedule (70.3), except that the MWC schedule was stronger at the top and weaker at the bottom. Still, there was no TCU standing in their way this year. Considering USCs ineligibility, there wasnt even a BYU either.

90.2 TCU
83.6 BYU
78.2 Air Force
67.1 Wyoming
64.9 UNLV
62.5 San Diego State
62.1 Colorado State
54.2 New Mexico

So, a historic opportunity for the Yewts, the likes of which they probably will never see again? Yes. Squandered? Very likely. Why? Main factor is probably Wynns injury (who could have seen that coming?) and the lack of *any* D-1 caliber backup QB. Whose fault is it that the Yewts have no depth at QB? I dunno, but Id look first at the guy with a penchant for switching QB recruits to defense.

Seems odd that the local hacks are falling all over themselves praising that same guy for pulling his team partway out of the hole he pushed them into, when all he had to do was keep them on the custom-built escalator that led to the championship game.