New Mexico coach Rocky Long has announced his resignation, saying that after 11 years at the helm, he doesn’t think he’s the man to bring the program to the next level.

“I want this program to be on top,” Long said. “I wanted it be on top as a player. I wanted it be on top as an assistant coach. And I wanted it to be on top as the head coach. I don’t see it happening with me as the head coach.”

Most of the time, when a coach “resigns” that really means he was pushed out. But in the case of Long, who has been the head coach at New Mexico since 1998 and was the school’s starting quarterback from 1969 to 1971, it seems that it really was Long’s decision. In fact, administrators said they were surprised that he had decided to step down.

Long thanked the loyal fans of New Mexico but said that there simply isn’t enough passion among the casual fans: “If you want to compete with the big boys, you’ve got to act like it,” Long said.

New Mexico’s season ended with Saturday’s loss at Colorado State, and the resignation is effective immediately. Long went 65-69, including 4-8 this year. He took the Lobos to five bowl games.

In the first game after the firing of coach Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee came out flat and ended up with an ugly 13-7 loss to Wyoming.

Tennessee quarterback Nick Stephens was intercepted by Cody Bousema on the Volunteers’ first drive, and Bousema returned it 55 yards to the Tennessee 4-yard line. On the next play, the Cowboys’ first offensive play of the game, they scored on a four-yard pass from Chris Stutzriem to Greg Genho.

The Cowboys scored again in the second quarter when Wyoming linebacker Ward Dobbs picked off a pass and returned it 24 yards to the end zone. Wyoming missed the extra point but went up 13-0 at halftime.

Although Tennessee did put together an 11-play, 64-yard touchdown drive in the third quarter to cut the deficit to 13-7, that was really the only time all day that Tennessee’s offense was effective, and there was no more scoring on the day.

For Tennessee, a loss at home to arguably the worst team in the Mountain West Conference has to be considered one of the worst losses in the history of the program. The Volunteers fall to 3-7 on the season, and it’ll be awfully hard to find anyone in Tennessee who’s sorry to see Fulmer go now.

When the news broke that Kansas State coach Ron Prince wouldn’t return next season, speculation immediately turned to Texas Christian coach Gary Patterson, a former Kansas State player.

And then the Kansas State Rivals site reported today that the deal was done, and Patterson had agreed to leave TCU for his alma mater. Several other news outlets then picked up the report.

But Patterson’s agent, George Bass, says it’s not true.

“We have had no contact with K-State,” Bass told Rivals.com.

Patterson is 71-27 at TCU, and he’s widely regarded as likely to leave TCU at some point to coach a BCS conference team. But right now the reports that he’s leaving for Kansas State appear to be premature.

Utah remained undefeated after its toughest test of the year Thursday night, with Brian Johnson hitting Freddie Brown in the end zone with 48 seconds left for a 13-10 win over TCU.

For the 10-0 Utes, it’s now simple: if they win their final two games, at San Diego State and home against BYU, they’re playing in a BCS bowl.

But we can’t forget about Boise State, which is 8-0 and will be heavily favored in its final four games. If the Broncos run the table, will they make the BCS, too?

I think they should, but I have a bad feeling that the powers that be in college football won’t allow two teams from outside the BCS conferences to play in BCS bowls.

The six winners of the BCS conferences are guaranteed to make it, and a non-BCS team in the top 12 is guaranteed to make it, too. But If there are two non-BCS teams in the top 12, only one of them is guaranteed a spot. This year, if both teams win out, that means Utah will get the guaranteed bid, and Boise State will have to hope it gets chosen.

And I think Boise State would get screwed, while the BCS chooses a big-conference school with a better pedigree but a worse record. I hope both teams run the table and the BCS proves me wrong.

Miami Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter has been at the center of a controversy this week over his war of words with Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall. But we shouldn’t overlook this week’s other incident involving Porter.

On Saturday, Porter paid a visit to his alma mater, Colorado State, and watched the Rams take on BYU. Porter was standing on the field just outside the end zone when Colorado State running back Gartrell Johnson scored a touchdown to give the Rams a 34-31 lead with 7:20 left in the game. After the touchdown, Porter gave Johnson a flying chest-bump, drawing a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct celebration penalty on Colorado State.

As it turned out, the 15 yards didn’t hurt the Rams, but they did end up losing to BYU, 45-42. Deadspin has a good photo of the Porter-Johnson celebration, and the video is below:

Here’s the TV feed:

There’s a game on tonight in which a Top 10 team with the nation’s longest winning streak is going on the road against a conference rival with a 6-1 record, but if you get all your sports news from ESPN, don’t expect to hear a lot about it.

The game is Brigham Young at Texas Christian, and since it’s on Versus and not ESPN, that means it’s not going to get prominent play on SportsCenter.

And that’s a shame. Other than Missouri at Texas on Saturday night, BYU-TCU is the game that has the most potential to shape the BCS picture. If BYU wins, there’s a very good chance that the BYU-Utah game on November 22 will feature a pair of undefeated teams, with the winner definitely in the BCS. The commissioners of the six BCS conferences are rooting for TCU.

TCU coach Gary Patterson makes clear just how big this game is for his team: “We have been talking about the BYU game since last January.”

In my view, the key to the game will be whether BYU quarterback Max Hall can withstand the pass rush from TCU’s defense, which will be the best he’s seen. So far Hall has put up ridiculous numbers; even in the Cougars’ win over New Mexico Saturday, which was their worst offensive showing of the season, he still went  22 of 34 for 258 yards, with three touchdowns and no interceptions.

My view is that Hall will struggle against the TCU defense. BYU is a 1.5-point favorite, but I think TCU will pull out a narrow win.

The Utah Utes are having an excellent season. They’re 7-0, they’ve beaten two BCS conference teams (Michigan and Oregon State), and they have an excellent chance of being undefeated when they play BYU on November 22 in what could be the biggest football game in the history of the state of Utah. Nothing I say below is intended to knock the Utah Utes.

With that out of the way, it’s absolutely ridiculous that someone with a vote in the Harris Interactive Poll chose Utah as the No. 1 team in the country. The Harris Poll always has some goofy voters choosing some goofy teams, but that’s just nuts.

There’s simply no logical reason to think Utah is the best team in the country. Better than Texas? Better than Alabama? Better than Penn State? Really?

It’s not known who voted for Utah, but even Utah coach Kyle Whittingham acknowledged that it was a head-scratcher.

“Who votes for that?” Whittingham asked at his press conference today. “I know it wasn’t me, and as far as I know my mom doesn’t have a vote in that. That is news to me. I didn’t realize that. I guess somebody out there loves us. I’ll take it.”

The Harris Poll makes up one-third of the BCS standings, with the coaches’ poll making up one-third and the average of six computer rankings making up one-third. For all the criticism that the computers get, I’ll gladly take the computers — which at least use real data — over the coaches who freely admit they only think about their own teams and their opponents, and certainly over the silly voters in the Harris Poll.

Just how good is the Mountain West Conference?

So far, it’s looking really good. Mountain West teams absolutely embarrassed the Pac-10 a couple of Saturdays ago, and even the worst team in the conference, San Diego State, almost won at Notre Dame.

But I think the first major test of what kind of conference the Mountain West really is will come on Saturday, when No. 24 TCU visits No. 2 Oklahoma. The Horned Frogs are 4-0 and have had an average margin of victory of more than 35 points a game. Their defense is No. 1 in Division 1-A in both rushing yards allowed per game and total yards allowed per game.

Of course, the first four games on their schedule have been just a wee bit easier than a trip to Oklahoma. And as much as I’d like to think that the TCU-Oklahoma match-up is going to make for an exciting game on Saturday, the reality, I think, is that Oklahoma has exactly the kind of approach on to make everyone forget how great TCU has looked on defense so far this season.

Said Horned Frogs coach Gary Patterson, “You’re not going to stop Oklahoma’s offense; you have to try to control it. You can’t let them have the big play or throw the ball over your head. If we can do what we’ve done offensively, get some turnovers, get some short fields — that’s the only way you beat Oklahoma in Norman.”

If TCU could beat Oklahoma in Norman, that would do a lot for the reputation of the Mountain West. But I don’t see it happening. I like Oklahoma to win big.

If there’s one team I got it wrong about before the season started, it’s Arizona State.

I really thought the Sun Devils were good enough to at least put a scare into their two toughest opponents, Georgia and USC, and probably run the table in their other 10 games. Instead, the Sun Devils lost to UNLV last night, and we can go ahead and write them off right now as contenders to be playing in a January bowl game.

The loss to UNLV was a disgraceful effort; the Sun Devils squandered a 10-point lead at home in the fourth quarter to a team that just got blown out by Utah a week ago.

“It was a nightmare,” Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson said. “It’s sickening. It starts with me. I didn’t have them ready to play. I’ll take the blame.”

Erickson should take all the blame. Arizona State’s fourth quarter and overtime represented one of the most disappointing performances in all of college football this year.

There’s not a whole lot of point in even trying to describe what happened in Provo today.

BYU beat UCLA, 59-0. Enough said?

Well, not quite. For starters, BYU looks like it has a very legitimate chance of going undefeated and ending up in a BCS bowl game. The way they played today, the Cougars look like they have a real chance of ending up in the BCS national championship game, although the way the BCS works, I don’t think there’s much chance of a non-BCS team actually getting there.

It was UCLA’s worst loss in 75 years. BYU led 42-0 at halftime and actually took its foot off the accelerator late; the Cougars didn’t score at all in the fourth quarter.

UCLA’s defense was absolutely horrendous; it  was as if they had never seen a forward pass before.

Also: How bad is Tennessee?