BYU climbing back to the top of the mountain

So many gaudy statistics, so little time. Undefeated BYU, which hosts Wyoming on Saturday, is 2-0 against Pac-10 teams this season, including last weekend's paradigm-changing, 59-0 drubbing of UCLA, a result so surreal and stunning that it forced us to ask: which is the team from the BCS conference, and which the mid-major from the wrong side of the tracks?

In suffering its worst loss in eight decades, UCLA averaged .56 yards per rushing attempt. The Bruins seldom laid a glove on Cougars quarterback Max Hall, who has yet to be sacked this season. His 186.8 efficiency rating is seventh-best in the nation. A redshirt sophomore who transferred from Arizona State two years ago, Hall has completed 91 of his 117 passes for 1,095 yards and 12 touchdowns -- all of them against UCLA. What's that you say? Hall only had seven touchdown passes against the Bruins? I stand corrected. What I meant to say, of course, was that he could have thrown for 12, had coach Bronco Mendenhall not taken mercy on the visitors, pulling his starter midway through the third quarter.

It's okay to mock UCLA this week -- the Bruins and whichever grandee(s) in the athletic department had the idea to take a out a Hubris-drenched, preseason full-page ad in the L.A. Times declaring: "The Football Monopoly in Los Angeles is Officially Over."

Don't know about that. What has been terminated, officially, is Rick Neuheisel's Westwood honeymoon. While there is shame in suffering so lopsided a loss to a foe from what is widely (if mistakenly) considered an inferior conference, there is less shame than you might think in getting clubbed by the BYU Cougars. This is a smart, deep, superbly coached, well-disciplined club that has won 11 games each of the past two seasons, and is now sitting on the nation's longest winning streak, at 13 games.

Following last season's rash of giant-slayings, college football's great leveling continues unabated in 2008. After the Pac-10 went 0-4 against the Mountain West last weekend -- and 3-7 overall; after a string of sorry performances by teams from the ACC, Big Ten and Big East so far this season, the lines between the so-called power conferences and those campesinos on the wrong side of the divide have never been quite so blurred, so indistinct. After their slaughter of the Bruins, the Cougars jumped from 18th in the AP poll to 14th, where they remain underrated.

One of the things that makes the college game more interesting than the NFL -- I actually wrote a book about this -- is its boundless variety. College football is a cornucopia of offenses, of traditions, ancient blood grudges and football cultures. And there isn't a more distinct, unique program than the one Mendenhall took over following the 2004 season.

The once-proud program was coming off its third straight losing season, a stretch of failure unequalled since the early 1960s. Mendenhall has returned the program to its former place by, among other things, embracing its uniqueness.

"It became clear to me that I was to make the football program as distinct and different as possible," he told BYU Magazine last year, "because this institution and its purpose are distinct and different and unique. BYU isn't like anywhere else. It wasn't designed to be."

There is a level of maturity and commitment among these players that simply doesn't exist at other programs. Above academics, above football, above his social life, the typical Cougar is instructed to "acknowledge and develop" his faith in the Mormon Church, as Mendenhall told Jim Rome earlier this week.

The guys who end up here have to really want to be here. Mendehnall draws from a pool of strong students "who want to live by the honor code here at BYU, which is: No alcohol, no tobacco, no premarital sex."