HB Arnetts 801 372 - 0819 hbarnett@fiber.net 1391 West 800 South Orem, Utah 84058 Vol. 33, Issue 40 July 9, 2013 Click <http://cougarclicks.com/product/Order-Cougar-Sportsline?ID=3173> Here To Order Or Renew Your Subscriptions Divide By 3 and You Will Be Less Disappointed In my 30 plus years in entrepreneurial endeavors catered to all things Cougar, I have learned a valuable lesson. Take your Pro Forma and projections for revenue and divide them by 3 and you will be more accurate but less affluent than you thought you would be. Im a guy who has dabbled in weekly newsletters (Cougar Sportsline), cooperative sales of travel trailers to qualify for satellite reception of Salt Lake City local television stations, Slingbox sales around the world (LDS mission presidents were my best customers), and daily Cougar sports news updates (Cougar Clicks). I have also sold recruiting DVDs and VHS tapes. In all those endeavors, the divide by 3 rule has kept me sane and solvent. Of course there is always an exception to every rule. In 1993, I underestimated the consumer power of Notre Dame Football fans. In those days you could get BYU end zone season tickets for $36. I bought 150 thinking I might eke out a few bucks by selling the ND vs. BYU ticket for a premium price. I should have bought 15,000 season tickets. I put a small ad in a Notre Dame booster magazine and was floored by the response and how much Irish fans were willing to pay to see their team play in Provo. If being Bishop of my LDS Ward was a political contest, I could have been elected in a write in landslide. Once I sold the Notre Dame tickets I gave away hundreds of UTEP, Fresno State, Hawaii and Air Force tickets to ward members. I had total strangers calling me at all hours inquiring about free BYU football tickets. In my heart, BYU is my favorite football team. In my wallet, I still worship Notre Dame. Enough of my entrepreneurial history, lets talk the present excitement currently surrounding BYU football. If you divide and cut the euphoria and effervescene bubbling around BYU football by 3, as Cougar fans, we are less likely to be disappointed this coming season. What cant be divided by 3 is the calendar. Bronco Mendenhall and his team are just 26 days away from the start of fall camp. With all of my pontificating and prognosticating, it might be time for proof that occasionally I may know what I am talking about. I wrote this in the newsletter less than a year ago on August 6, 2012. You Wont Like November If you are reading this newsletter, the demographics of Cougar Sportsline indicate that the chances are about 95 percent that you are a BYU football fan, will vote for Mitt Romney and know who Jabari Parker is. Brace yourself. You arent going to like November. Come November, BYU should already have at least 4 losses and be out of any BCS consideration. Mitt Romney wont be President of the United States and Jabari Parker wont be signing with BYU. Thats a tough triumvirate to swallow. If you are keeping score, The Romneys are now living in San Diego, not the White House. By November 1 of last year, BYU had already lost to Utah 21-24, Boise State 6-7, Oregon State 24-42 and Notre Dame 14-17. Jabari Parker jilted BYU and jotted his signature on a Duke letter of intent. In my opinion, here are 3 good reasons to divide your expectations of BYU football this coming season by 3. You will be a lot happier with the results. Lets start with Numero Uno. That would be Bronco Mendenhall. Despite a softer presentation of the public persona of Mendenhall and his own Twitter account, he is still Mendenhall. He is a phenomenal defensive mind and coach. He is a great motivator of players in private. He is a great manager of the BYU football experience as it is presented to the players and public in general. He is unequaled in that role. But, until consistently proven otherwise, his game management skills and personnel management skills are still a little sketchy, in my opinion. I cite the four losses before November last season and the inexplicable loyalty to playing an injured Riley Nelson as prime examples. 2. A new and unproven offensive coaching staff. Yes, there is excitement surrounding this new staff. Robert Anae is back. We will find out in a hurry if that is a good thing or a bad thing. My initial reaction is that it is a good thing. Of the 5 new offensive coaches, 3 have absolutely zero, zip, nada or nothing when it comes to experience coaching at the Division I level. Anae and Guy Holliday, the wide receiver coach, have been around the Division I block, but QB coach Jason Beck, Running Back coach Mark Atuaia and offensive line coach, Garett Tujague have never coached a down at the Division I level. 3. The talent level is good, but not National Championship or Top 10 caliber. Bronco Mendenhall, unabashedly says BYU can be a BCS contender and eventually a National Champion. He bases that, in part, on how well BYU competed and played against Notre Dame last season in South Bend. The rationale for optimism seems to be that Notre Dame played in the National title game and BYU played competitively with the Irish, so consequently BYU should be able to also play for a national crown. Heres the problem. Notre Dame was not a national caliber team. They were undefeated when facing Alabama, but as exposed by the Crimson Tide, the Irish didnt have national title talent. BYU has talent this coming season, but quite frankly, it is not national championship talent. Thats the bad news. Even with a potential glossy record of 12-0, 11-1, or 10-2, BYU wont be national title worthy. The good news is that BYU could very well be Top 25 material. So take the top 25 and divide it by 3. In my opinion, If BYU can beast Texas at home and Notre Dame on the road, the Cougars should be a lock for somewhere in the bottom third of those rankings; somewhere between No. 17-25 in the national polls. Wins over Wisconsin or Notre Dame late in the year, assuming the Badgers are contenders in the Big 10 and Notre Dame is relevant, and BYU could see itself nestled in the national rankings in the 8-16 range. Anything higher than that is not in the cards or the ingrained money and power structure that is under the current control of the Big 5 Leagues and tier 1 football. If you can delete national championship from your dreams and vocabulary for this season, then BYU football will be a very entertaining endeavor this year. The reason for that projection is players. BYU has some good ones. Using my Divide by 3 model here are some evaluations of some of BYUs best players and their projections and production for the coming season. Taysom Hill, QB He will not be better than Robert Griffin III and what he produced at Baylor. Its likely he wont be better than Johnny Football Manziel was last season at Texas A&M. Both produced Heisman trophies for their performances. Barring a season-ending injury in the first quarter of the season opener against Virginia Hill will be better than Riley Nelson; BYUs starting quarterback of last year at BYU. This year Hill will be a pass first, run later quarterback. That suits his skill set more effectively than the primarily option read offense of last season and protects his knee. Think Steve Young, and then divide it by 3, at least in this, the first full year of Hill at the helm. Steve Young, divided by 3, in my opinion will be Steve Sarkisian, with Jake Locker type legs and escapability. Running Backs Think Luke Staley, then divide by 3. That equals Jamaal Williams and Adam Hine. Williams, has more shake than Staley, but not the speed of the former Cougar great. Hine, in my opinion, could be the next Harvey Unga for BYU. How and when the duo is deployed and used in the new up tempo offense and by a new offensive coaching staff, remains to be seen. Wide Receivers Think Austin Collie, but that would be wishful thinking. He isnt coming back wearing Cougar blue. Last season it was Cody Hoffman subtracted by 3. Hoffman had no help last year. He was the downfield, underneath and intermediate pass game. If Hoffman can get help from anybody else on the receiving roster this season, BYU will be back in the passing business and Robert Anae and new receiver coach, Guy Holliday, will get credit for it. In reality, for the Cougar offense to be a legitimate passing threat, Hoffman will need to be multiplied, not divided by 3. One name that has popped up over the summer and mentioned by Taysom Hill and Ammon Olson, the No. 1 and 2 BYU quarterbacks, heading into fall camp, is Mitch Mathews. Both QBs have said that he is a receiver to keep your eye on in the fall. At 6-6, the redshirt sophomore caught 2 passes last season. Offensive Line Start with 8 new bodies this season on the offensive line roster and hope that at least 3 can play and compete at this level. This is the preseason area with the most optimism, excitement, hype and hope. Divide that optimism by 3 and it might still be an improvement over last season. Dont expect miracles here. Be satisfied if these guys can keep Taysom Hill healthy. Anything over that, at least at the start of the season, will be a bonus. Garett Tujague, the new offensive line coach has said that the two guys that were already on the roster that have impressed him the most since he arrived on campus in January are Michael Yeck and Terrance Alletto. Alletto is a 6-3, 285 pound redshirt sophomore and Yeck is a 6-8, 290 pound redshirt junior. For an interesting interview with Tujague by KSL last Saturday, Click <http://www.ksl.com/?sid=25879353&nid=1216&s_cid=rss-extlink> Here and then scroll down the left hand side to the Tujague segment. Kicking Game Based on last seasons field goal kicking performance, Bronco should use the divide by 3 model this season. Divide the football field by 3 and you get 33. Anytime the Cougars have a fourth down anywhere inside the 33 yard line, they should keep the offense on the field and go for it. Defense You cant argue with the production and performance of a Bronco Mendenhall defense, so we wont. It should be good again this season. Ziggy Ansah was a major player last season. You cant argue that, but you can argue that if not for an injury to Eathyn Manumaleuna, Ansah wouldnt have been selected in the NFL draft. Kyle Van Noy is a major player. You cant argue that, but you should probably divide by 3 just how productive you think he will be this season. That is because on every single snap, opposing offenses will have 3 guys focusing on Van Noy in an effort to keep him from making plays. He will be as good as he has been and maybe even better, but his defensive stats will probably go down because of all the attention he will be receiving from opposing teams. Hard and Fast If Robert Anaes description his new offense actually comes to fruition, then older Cougar fans like me with bladder or prostate problems will have to mimic the new offense. During bathroom breaks some of us patrons may also have to go hard and go fast, or risk missing some of the up tempo offense on the field. We already go often. Last season, BYU possessed the ball on offense for 414 minutes and 21 seconds. During that time they ran a total of 1003 offensive plays. That works out on the average to a play every 24.8 seconds. There has been big time talk about the number of plays BYU will be running this season. The announced plan is to run an offensive play approximately every 12 seconds or twice as many plays as were run last season. It wont happen. I base that assumption on the Arizona offense of last season, which is supposed to be the model for BYUs new offensive scheme. The Wildcats possessed the ball on offense for 352 minutes last year. They ran 1082 plays in that time frame. That works out to be a play every 19.5 seconds. A play every 12 seconds is a nice projection by BYU and its offense this fall, but a more realistic result will probably be a play every 18-19 seconds. However, if Anae and his associates can actually meet their offensive goal of a play every 12 seconds, then I will have a new entrepreneurial enterprise to pursue. The basic business plan would involve securing the rights from BYU to install Depends diaper dispensers in every bathroom at LaVell Edwards Stadium. The harder and faster the new BYU offense runs, the less I will have to. BYU will go undefeated - in August, but I see 3 Likely Losses for BYU on the season BYU will be undefeated in July and August during fall camp and against Virginia. Hype and hope will be at its usual peak. That should last until Texas comes calling the first week in September. I see at least three losses for the Cougars this season. To whom those losses will occur is still to be determined, but the list of teams from where those losses will come isnt. Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Notre Dame are the likely candidates. BYU will be a very good football team, but they are starting the year with a historical deficit that should cost them at least three games. As good as Taysom Hill is, he will be a first year starting quarterback for BYU. Go back and look at BYU football history. Guys like Ty Detmer, Steve Sarkisian, John Beck, John Walsh and even Steve Young, to name a few, didnt set the world on fire during their first seasons playing quarterback for BYU. Hopefully Hill is different, but history isnt on his side. Players to be named later may work in trades in Major League baseball, but it is a bad thing to be talking about in college football with the season just 8 weeks away. Players to be named later is what the BYU offensive line is all about at the moment. A new quarterback and unproven and even unknown offensive linemen is not a good combination with which to start the season. Come November, when Hill should have experience and the offensive line will be better, Notre Dame and Wisconsin in November may not be likely losses. Until then, I still see a minimum of three defeats for the Cougars in 2013. BYU Already Has 8 ½ Football Wins In Recruiting Bronco Mendenhall and his staff never get any vacation time when it comes to recruiting. It is a year round deal. Here are the current 8 1/2 commitments that the Cougars have secured for the upcoming 2014 recruiting class. Teancum (Tico) Fuga, DL, 6-1, 280, Edison HS, CA The younger brother of Romney Fuga. Had offers from Utah, Utah State and Boise State. Is LDS. Sione Takitaki, DL, 6-3, 240, Heritage HS, CA Had offers from Arizona, Nevada, San Jose State, Washington State and Wisconsin. Also had recruiting interest from Utah, Boise State and Washington. Is LDS. Chandon Herring, OL, 6-7, 260, Perry HS, AZ Had recruiting interest from Arizona State and Air Force. Is LDS. Austin Chambers, OL, 6-5, 285, Shawnee Mission West HS, KS Recruited by Kansas. Is LDS. Fred Warner, LB, 6-3, 205, Mission Hills HS, CA Recruited and offered by Cal, Arizona, ASU, Utah, Washington State and most recently, USC. Is LDS. Trey Dye, WR, 5-11, 175, Cooper HS, TX Recruited by Utah, Utah State and Texas Tech. Is the son of former Cougar receiver and kick returner, James Dye. Is LDS. Zac Dawe, DL, 6-4, 260, Pleasant Grove HS, UT Recruited by Utah, Utah State, Boise State with interest from Nebraska. Is LDS. Neil Pauu. QB, 6-3, 190, Servite HS, CA Committed over a year ago. His older brother Butch signed with the Cougars last February. Is LDS. Isaiah Nacua, DL, 6-3, 255, Bishop Gorman HS, NV, now Timpview HS, Provo, UT Committed to the Cougars early, but now reportedly says he is reopening his recruitment because of interest from college football big boys. The fact that he will be playing his senior season in Provo and his older brother signed with BYU in February, we are calling him a half commit for the Cougars. Is LDS. Weekly Publishing of the Newsletter in August Cougar Sporstsline will renew our weekly publication schedule beginning with the start of fall football camp for BYU in August.
