BYU Football: Without Utah Game, Texas Poses as 2014 Rivalry

For the past 90-plus years, BYU and Utah have built one of the most heated rivalries in college football. The "Holy War" has been an annual meeting between the two, and with the game taking a break until 2016, neither team has a true rivalry contest on its schedule.

Luckily for the Cougars, Texas took last year's 40-21 loss in Provo personally.

BYU ran all over the Longhorn defense last September, and although now-UT coach Charlie Strong was still at Louisville, he's seen the tape (over and over) and won't let it happen again.

“That’s all we hear about is BYU,” defensive end Cedric Reed said, via Jeff Call of the Deseret News. “We’ve got BYU marked on our calendars.”

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In a way, this will be the Cougars' rivalry game for 2014. Of course, they have Utah State on the schedule, but the Aggies have always filled the "little brother" role for BYU. And, despite a big game in Boise coming up, the Broncos are on the decline, and it may not be much of a game.

It's usually great to have a big-named, power-five team preparing for you like you are its rival. You want teams to treat you like you have the upper hand.

But at the same time, coach Bronco Mendenhall has struggled with preparing his teams for heated rivalry games. Considering he has gone 0-4 in the last four years against Utah, and 6-3 all-time, it is no shock to see him try to downplay the significance of Saturday's game.

“That will be the story all week, of what happened last year,” Mendenhall said, via Call. “But, man, I don’t think from a coach’s perspective that will impact the outcome of the game at all. … Ultimately, we still have to get prepared to play a football game.”

So prepare you shall. Especially when Strong has "Believe You're Unbeatable" signs in the UT locker room and some Texas fans are rewriting the Bible:

In all seriousness, Strong and his team are preparing for this game like none other. They don't consider losing as an option. Unless Mendenhall does the same, it will be very, very hard to leave Austin with a win on Saturday night. 

"Now [the Longhorns] look at us and they know we're not the underdogs no more," Cougar running back Jamaal Williams said, via ABC 4 Sports. "They know they've got to play us like we're a big team and we are a big team so it's going to be a great game."