ESPN Independents and Others Blog

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

FORT WORTH, Texas -- As chants of "overrated" rang out through the stands of Amon G. Carter Stadium, No. 9 BYU could only hang its head and quietly jog off the field in an overwhelming cloud of disappointment.

The Cougars had thoroughly been beaten, 32-7, by TCU, a team that admitted earlier in the week that defeating BYU had been on its mind since last January.

	AP Photo/Donna McWilliam
	Bronco Mendenhall and the Cougars could do little to slow down TCU Thursday night.

It was the second-worst loss in coach Bronco Mendenhall's four seasons and surprising because the Cougars had come into the game as the non-BCS darling. This was the team that was going to storm the BCS and awake the ghosts of 1984 -- the year of BYU's national championship. The Cougars were riding a 16-game winning streak, hadn't lost a conference game in more than two years and were ranked higher than any other non-BCS team.

But the Cougars ran into a faster, better organized and driven TCU team. It was the first team with a winning record BYU had faced since playing Northern Iowa of the FCS to begin the season, and the first chance BYU had to show naysayers that it was worthy of its top 10 ranking and national media hype.

Instead of dispelling claims that they weren't as good as their record, the Cougars merely fueled the fire for the chants that ushered them off the field.

"Coach [Gary] Patterson had his team more prepared than I had our team," Mendenhall said. "They were sharper in every phase of the game, executed at a higher level from beginning to end, and again that comes down to simply coaching and preparation and their staff did a better job than I did for our program."

The loss likely ends any chance for BYU to make a BCS game. With four undefeated teams remaining -- Utah, Boise State, Ball State and Tulsa -- the Cougars will have to wait before the BCS buster carousel comes back around to them.

If everything stays static after this weekend's round of games, Utah should become the leading BCS buster with Boise State falling in behind the Utes. BYU might find itself behind the Broncos in the national polls, but when the BCS standings come out on Sunday, the Cougars will be well out of the top 12 spots necessary to gain an automatic BCS berth.

After the game, Mendenhall said many times that the loss was on his preparation. The Cougars had a short turnaround for the game, but so did TCU. Earlier in the week, quotes from BYU players suggested that they knew the offensive and defensive schemes for the Horned Frogs because they had seen them before and were prepared for them.

But the Cougars didn't look prepared for anything Thursday night.

Now BYU must shift its focus to winning the Mountain West title. With TCU at the top of the conference, and Utah close behind and playing Colorado State this weekend, the Cougars will need to win out and hope for key losses by other teams to keep a three-peat alive.

Luckily for the Cougars, they have a little longer of a turnaround before they have to step on the field again to try to salvage what could still be a promising season.

"I believe they'll be disappointed and I believe there will be a day or two or three before they're able to get over it knowing the expectations they had for themselves and clearly not meeting them," Mendenhall said. "I think there will be a period where they'll have to get over it, so to speak, and they're going to have to move forward. The quicker I can help them with that process the better knowing that we're in the middle of the conference race and that's one of our main goals."