How are you feeling, Cougar Nation?

I don’t know if I ever remember a Saturday where BYU rolled through so many opponents in so many sports. The day started with a pair of national champions (Whittni Orton and Conner Mantz) in the NCAA Cross Country Championships and the wins just kept coming.

BYU women’s volleyball clinched the West Coast Conference title with a 3-1 victory at Saint Mary’s; Women’s basketball crushed Boise State 84-40; The women’s soccer team avenged last year’s NCAA loss to Virginia with a 1-0 third round victory at Charlottesville; Men’s basketball cruised to a 97-61 win vs. Central Methodist; the men’s club soccer team won a national title and of course, the BYU football team finished off a 34-17 victory at Georgia Southern.

It wasn’t the kind of victory many fans were hoping for, the better to impress the college football playoff committee. There were grumbles when Kalani Sitake opted to kneel on the ball with two minutes left and the Cougars driving for another score. There aren’t many college football coaches who would do the same thing in the same situation.

Honestly, with how yappy and Coastal Carolina-ish the Bulldog players were, I’m surprised there wasn’t a Hans-Gruber-from Die Hard “Hit it again” moment at the end by the BYU offense. Sitake said in the post-game that there were burritos being thrown at the Cougars on the sideline.

Who throws a burrito, honestly?

Yeah, the Cougars were a little sluggish on both sides of the ball after a week off instead of shiny and refreshed and Sitake alluded to the fact that his team may have overlooked Georgia Southern.

The good news is that BYU is ranked No. 13 in the AP poll and 9-2 heading into next Saturday’s meeting with a stumbling USC (4-6), which surrendered 62 points to rival UCLA on Saturday. The Trojans are 4-6 and need wins against the Cougars and in two weeks against Cal to get bowl eligible. To be honest, I’m not sure that’s much incentive for a program with as much history as USC. I will be interested to see just how focused the Trojans are on Saturday considering their train-wreck of a season.

The takeover of Memorial Coliseum is going to happen. USC fans have lost interest and Cougar Nation is gobbling up tickets like … man, I can’t think of anything to compare it to. If there were only some holiday when people ate a lot of food.

The rich get richer

BYU women’s volleyball announced three signees for the Class of 2022 this week: Idaho’s Eden Bower, Connecticut’s Nataly Moravec and Texas’ Hannah Billeter. Both Bower and Moravec were recently named first team AVCA All-Americans. Bower is the younger sister of current Cougars Whitney and Morgan and got some of her father’s height at 6-foot-2. Her dad is Danny Bower, a 6-4 guard who played for the Cougars in the 1990’s. Eden Bower led Skyview of Nampa to a 36-2 record (both losses were to out-of-state teams) and a state title. She averaged a mind-boggling seven kills per set and hit .360.

On the run

BYU’s Tyler Allgeier has passed Luke Staley into seventh place on the all-time BYU rushing list (2,596 yards) and move past Harvey Unga and Jamaal Willliams on the single-season list with 1,298 yards.

A few weeks ago his high school coach, Bill Cardosi, posted on social media that Kaiser High School had broken the single game rushing record against South Torrence with 52 carries for 648 yards and six touchdowns. Sophomore Ky’el Tyler had 21 carries for 313 yards and four touchdowns and sophomore Jonathan Marshall Jr. had 26 carries for 284 yards and two scores.

Sports-splaining

BYU and Utah fans continue to go at each other on social media. Ute fans swear their team would beat the Cougars if they played tomorrow and BYU fans simply say, “scoreboard” because of the 27-19 victory over Utah in September.

By the way, I think someone needs to explain how this “rent free” thing works. If you directly try to tweak a fan base and they respond, that’s trolling. If you’re tweeting about something unrelated and another fan base responds, that’s living rent free in your opponent’s head. Make sense?

That’s all for now, but for this: There’s another amusing rivalry on social media between BYU and a group calling itself, “The Show,” which is supposed to represent San Diego State basketball fans. The most amusing part of it is that “The Show” is loud and obnoxious before the two teams play and as silent as the grave when the Cougars get the victory.

Some enterprising fan actually changed San Diego State’s Wikipedia page to read, “The San Diego State Aztecs men’s basketball team represents San Diego State University, located in San Diego, California, and is currently owned by Brigham Young University superstar Alex Barcello.”

That’s funny.

Have a great week and enjoy Thanksgiving. Remember to pace yourselves.

You’ll be able to eat more.

Darnell Dickson

Newsletter