1. When programs were not playing (B1G, PAC, MWC, MAC) they were burning clock without practice for the first 5 weeks. Many watched BYU play and they continue to see BYU perform x scoring. It's a myth that the coaches appointed each year to vote in the AMWAY Poll defer their choices to their SID's. It may happen in a very few cases, but most votes are cast by the head coach or a coach assigned to keep track of the other programs, and they do. The voting coach must execute his ballot and certify that his choices are his. Only about 50% of coaches at the FBS Level even get to vote and the roster of voters changes every year. Different conferences are represented with different numbers of voting members too. This year, the poll only has I believe 1 B12 coach on panel, maybe 2-3 from the PAC. The current panel is far more heavily weighted with G5's as a percentage of the total too. You can all make of it what you want. But #1 means that football people, be it a head coach, an assigned assistant of someone with extensive experience in the game is actually casting those votes. That makes their opinion pretty important. This leads to #2 & 3...

2. Writers (AP) poll. These people change from time to time as people move from organization to organization. But the overall changes are usually not as dramatic as the coaches poll. Writers in the B1G/MAC footprint and over in the PAC/MWC footprint were stuck with a season and no teams to cover for 2/3rd of the season. I can tell you flat out, a lot of them were ticked off royally at the conferences they normally cover. But, it also meant that BYU as the late night edition and often the only game west of Texas was getting eyeballs when it normally would not. So BYU got a tremendous amount of exposure in the media. Most football writers are actually quite smart. Many in football media are students of the game and have considerable knowledge of it. This leads to #3...

3. The eye test. People (some working for BYU Sports Nation) think they are smarter than the Coaches, former players now acting as analysts and more expert Writers/Analysts; and say BYU at best is 18th. Some say, UTAH would be better. Some say, but who has BYU played? Well the problem with that the people that KNOW THE GAME are voting BYU much higher, 8-11 spots higher. In the coaches poll, BYU comes in at #10 and that's with the B1G and PAC being in the "consideration mix" now for three poll iterations. Why is BYU so high? BECAUSE BYU IS PASSING THE TECHNICAL EYE TEST. Those people who have seen BYU play have seen near flawless special teams execution for 6 games, an offense that scores on more than 50% of its possessions, or takes a knee inside the red zone at the end of games. BYU is playing good defense through most of each game, getting 3rd down stops when it matters most. When you can hold opponents to under 30% conversion, you are going to be a top ten defense. People are seeing the little things that make BYU extremely good:

* Footwork,
* Hip-work and Driving through tackles,
* Picking the correct cover quarter (shoulder and forward, backside, etc.) for the route defending,
* Avoiding costly penalties most of the time,
* Playing with good emotional control,
* and a dozen other small but important technique operations in execution on a play x play and player x player basis.

FYI For those of you that will jump on me for saying top ten defense when BYU dropped this weekend in many rankings, take a long look at the number of games played. Everyone knows that the first and second game stats are rather skewed. Toss the teams that have played just 1 or 2 games so far from the NCAA stats and see where BYU really ranks among teams that have played a representative number of games 3/more.