We interrupt our regular coverage of religion to talk about sports (and, no, I don’t confuse the two).

I have been watching (and following) BYU football since arriving on campus as a freshman in 1971. This means, of course, lots of excitement mixed in with varying levels of frustration.

But today’s game against UCLA (the final score, for those who don’t know: 59-0) is possibly the most perfect game of football I’ve ever seen BYU play. There have been plenty of other routs in BYU history, but they were usually against relatively weak conference rivals. This was against a UCLA team that beat 18th ranked Tennessee two weeks ago.

Yeah, there were a few early penalties, and one interception (which did nothing for UCLA), but BYU was pretty much invincible in all its departments: offense, defense, special teams, and coaching. If Coach Mendenhall had left Max Hall in the game (he pulled him — and much of the 1st team offense — halfway through the 3rd quarter, with the score 52-0), the final score might well have been around 80-0. As it was, our second-string offense went on score a touchdown on UCLA.

By the way, I’ve found two great blogs for covering BYU football: the Cougar Blog at the Salt Lake Tribune, and Deep Shades of Blue, a blog by former BYU player Quinn Gooch.

59-zip against UCLA. Heh. I’ll be smiling about this one all season long.  ..bruce..

[UPDATED 2317 MDT]

Holy crap! The MWC went 4-0 against Pac-10 opponents today:

• BYU beats UCLA 59-0
• TCU beats Stanford 31-14
• New Mexico beats Arizona 36-28
• and UNLV(!) beats #15 Arizona State (!!!) 23-20 in overtime!

If you’re wondering why the gloating, it’s because just a few years ago, Pac-10 coaches (I’m thinking in particular of the coach at Oregon State) said that BYU and the rest of the MWC teams were in no way good enough to compete in the Pac-10. Heh.  ..bruce..

We now resume our regular programming.