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Don't tell Gary Patterson , coach of the No. 12 TCU Horned Frogs, that the Mountain West Conference is weak this year.
He also doesn't want to hear talk about TCU busting into the Bowl Championship Series -- not yet, anyway.
Patterson, one of the few coaches in America who admits to reading newspapers, watching games on television and generally following college football like most fans do, said Tuesday that the league is better than it has been portrayed in recent articles.
"One of the things that I think everybody has to take into consideration, is I don't think that you are going to see as many blowout games through the league as maybe you did five or six years ago when we first started," he said.
"I think every team is improved. Everybody has real good football coaches. Every week they are going to come up with schemes to have a chance to be successful, and you can't say well, there are not great teams."
The MWC is 20-15 against nonconference opponents this season, but just 5-9 against schools from BCS leagues. Last year, when Utah, BYU and TCU all finished ranked in the top 25, MWC teams were 28-13 against teams from other leagues and 10-6 against BCS teams.
"I read somewhere that there are not great teams in the Mountain West this year because there are no blowout scores," Patterson continued. "I think what you are seeing is there is a lot of parity in the league, and just to win a ballgame in the league
In moving to 5-0 last week, TCU got a stiff test from Air Force before beating the Falcons 20-17, but Patterson reminded reporters that TCU twice turned the ball over in the red zone, or the score could easily have been 34-17.
Lack of blowouts by the Big Three (Utah, TCU, BYU) is a "negative toward the league because the rest of the world thinks you have to have large numbers and be able to do things, but I don't think you are going to see that on a week-to-week basis because there is so much parity and there's a closeness as far as the level of player in this league, and the coaching," Patterson said.
Just getting started, Patterson said it is way too early to start talking about TCU as a BCS team.
"The BCS stuff is good for everybody, but we haven't had the BCS standings [come out] yet, so I told everybody we had to get through the first seven ball games, and if we could be more successful than not, then maybe you could have conversations about it.
"But with Colorado State and BYU the next two weeks, I think we better just keep our noses down, because that's a lot of football."
Lowly Lobos
New Mexico coach Mike Locksley was suspended for a game on Tuesday and will miss 10 days as punishment for striking receivers coach J.B. Gerald . Because the Lobos have a bye this week, he will miss the Oct. 24 game against UNLV.
The coach said the bye comes at a good time.
"We are at the midpoint of our season," he said. "Obviously, we are not where we would like to be, sitting at 0-6.
"This bye will allow us to get healthy, evaluate everything that we are doing within our program, schematically, personnel, to be able to come back the last six weeks and to make marked improvement. And that's what we would like to get accomplished this week."
Start comparing?
Because his is the only MWC team that has played both BYU and Utah this season, CSU coach Steve Fairchild was asked to compare the No. 18 Cougars and No. 24 Utes.
"Both play good defense, and BYU has got a little more experience at quarterback [ Max Hall ], but the Utah quarterback [ Terrance Cain ] certainly played well, so both are very good teams," he said, diplomatically.
