As BYU's 34-14 win over suddenly plucky Utah State moved into the fourth quarter in Logan on Friday night, a rather strange and somewhat perplexing phenomenon swept through the crowd of 23,101, approximately three-fifths of which were Aggie fans.

Along with demeaning their own team by chanting that old high school standby at the Cougars - "overrated, overrated" - the Big Blue faithful saved some of its loudest roars for when BYU players made a mistake - such as when quarterback Max Hall was tackled behind the line of scrimmage with the ball in his arms for the first time this season, or after a face-mask penalty.

For the Cougars and their BCS-busting aspirations, the question now becomes: Did anybody who really matters notice how poorly they played after the first quarter in the rare Friday contest against the team Sports Illustrated recently called the worst in the Football Bowl Subdivision?

That won't be answered until the polls come out today. A quick search of Web sites devoted to college football and the races for BCS berths revealed little, if any, scathing commentary on BYU's performance, as most national pundits seemingly had turned their attention to Saturday's games.

The Cougars entered the game No. 7 in the coaches poll, No. 8 in the AP poll and No. 9 in the Harris Interactive poll. The coaches' poll and the Harris poll are taken into account (one-third each) in the BCS rankings formula. The AP poll means nothing.

The first BCS standings will be released on Oct. 19, and the Cougars already know the computer rankings - the other third of the BCS formula - will not treat them as well as the voters, mostly because of their strength of schedule and the fact that the FBS teams BYU has defeated - Utah State, UCLA, Washington and Wyoming - are having horrible seasons.

For his part, BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall seemed to acknowledge that the Cougars' ragged, uninspired performance against a team they were favored to beat by 29 or 30 points (and a team that No. 15 Utah crushed 58-10 at the same venue) will hurt his team's standing in the polls today.

"Any time you win a football game, it is satisfying," he said. "[But] especially what is clear to me now is the expectation, how many [points] that you win by and well that you play is important."

He said playing well, and not just winning, "has always been important to me" and that the Cougars "could play better football than we did."

The game was not on mainstream national television, which could play into BYU's favor because the final score was probably lopsided enough for most voters. East Coast voters who may have checked a partial score before retiring to bed might have noticed a 34-0 score, which is how it stood entering the fourth quarter.

Sure, BYUTV televised the game and has national distribution (about 50 million homes), but that's a channel most folks outside of Utah probably don't know exists.

Also, the Cougars received a lot of positive attention on ESPN's broadcasts both Thursday and Friday night as analysts discussed whether BYU could play for the national title if it went undefeated. Most said it can't, a reality Mendenhall himself acknowledged in a teleconference on Tuesday.

Generally, though, the feeling among the players is that there are still a lot of games left to regain the swagger they had after beating UCLA and Wyoming but seemingly lost under the Friday night lights against the Aggies.

"A win is a win," said BYU receiver Austin Collie. "You can't take anything away from that. We got a W again, and we are . . . 5-0 right now, and we are going to continue to fight and continue to win football games, and really that's all that matters."

Is he right?

At around noon today, we'll find out.

Briefly

Spanish Fork tight end Richard Wilson, rated as the No. 7 tight end in the country by one recruiting service, orally committed to play football for BYU, a commitment that was reported on The Salt Lake Tribune's Web site on Friday.

Wilson also had offers from Tennessee, LSU, Miami, Stanford, Utah and others.

"It just felt right," said Wilson, who called BYU coaches on Friday morning to inform them he was headed their way.

drew@sltrib.com