The team was distracted by other, big-picture objectives. The Heisman and BCS bowl. You can also add Staley's injury to 2001.

News, or the result, for both of them came shortly before each game. That caused a huge emotional let down each year. Sports psychology is tricky.

It didn't help, either, that Hawaii had some of its better teams those years, but so did BYU. We have gone to the islands and taken care of business against really good Hawaii teams before (1981 comes to mind).

At the very least, those games wouldn't have been nearly as bad.