Time has a way of eroding at the broad generalizations that humanity uses to label things it finds impressive.

• The Titanic did not turn out to be unsinkable.

• The Maginot Line in France was not actually impenetrable.

• The speed of sound was not an unbreakable barrier.

• Roger Maris' season home run record was not unbeatable.

Those assertions seem laughable in retrospect, just like the common misconception stated by Mountain West Conference football coaches make every year that the league is too good from top to bottom for any one team to go undefeated in conference play.

Riiiiiiight.

If I hear that tired old phrase one more time in the preseason press conference, I may just throw a pen at the podium.

With BYU capping off its second straight unblemished run through the league by knocking off San Diego State, it's happened in four consecutive seasons and five times in the nine-year existence of the league.

That makes it about as impossible as claiming there is no corruption in politics. The evidence is far too substantial for such a claim to carry any weight at all.

The Cougars have dominated the MWC since the arrival of head coach Bronco Mendenhall, winning 21 of the 24 league games they've played and now 16 in a row.

It was quite an accomplishment in 2007 for a BYU team that lost the core of its offensive success after the 2006 season.

"I remember talking before the season about how this year wouldn't be the same," said senior linebacker Bryan Kehl. "But sure enough, here we are. We reloaded and put new guys in new places and got the job done again."

Another undefeated year in the conference is good for BYU supporters, but the sobering reality is that the Cougars need more from the rest of the league.

I know, Cougar fans, many of you fondly remember a world in which the boys in Blue and White regularly marched through their conference slate without many -- if any -- losses and were part of a perennial Top 25 team.

But the stakes are different in the world of the Bowl Championship Series.

To get to that top tier -- and the big bucks that come with it -- you have to have notoriety and that's not going to happen very easily in the Mountain West.

It simply isn't very good overall and that diminishes the meaning of rolling through it unbeaten.

Name the biggest victory the conference has had in the past two years.

BYU blasting Oregon? Air Force over Notre Dame? Utah beating UCLA?

That's the best the Mountain West has been able to muster, while the WAC can point to Boise State beating Oklahoma in that time span.

The result is a questionable Hawaii on the brink of getting into a BCS game -- that is, if the Warriors came back to beat Washington late Saturday -- while the Cougars are, again, on the outside looking in.

Beating up on bad teams does very little to impress either voters or computers, as evidenced by the slow rise of BYU in the polls in a year when everyone is piling up losses.

The Cougars have bought into the tradition that Mendenhall has embraced, but that also means lofty goals.

"We're not just a great team one year," said junior running back Fui Vakapuna. "We have a great program. Going undefeated again is a stepping stone to our goals. We want to be in the mix for a national title again. Since they did it in 1984, why not us?"

Until the Cougars get some help -- knocking off a team that has beaten a Texas, an Ohio State or even a Cal -- or defeats a Top 5 team themselves (i.e. 1984), the dream of returning to national championship contention will remain forever out of reach, no matter how many conference games they win.

• Jared Lloyd can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it