I think that these are two football benchmarks that will always fall short and there are a lot of reasons.

1. Think about the time, money and emotional investment involved in tailgating. Now, I'm not talking about the vanilla tailgaters (like me) who can go for an hour, have a good time, etc. Those are great, but the ones who really bring the atmosphere are the beer-sharing, brat-grilling, Bigscreen-generator bringin' diehards that spend their entire Saturday at the game. That just doesn't fit well into the "moderation" Mormon mantra. . .aka football fifth. Also, I was talking to a guy about the Texas game tailgating and he was telling me that be as a Texans and Texas fan, on weekends where they play Saturday and Sunday, it was a "lost weekend." So, for LDS people who won't go shopping, mow the lawn, etc. etc. on Sunday, giving up an entire Saturday is giving up the whole weekend.

2. I'll force this in here, since I can. I get sick of people hanging their heads over the number of players BYU gets into the NFL. Yes, we could and should do better. However, we'll probably never get as many in there as Texas or USC or Virginia or whatever for a bevy of reasons. Take your pick: 1. Often not as much hype. 2. Until recently, not as much exposure. 3. The NFL lifestyle/mindset can sometimes be difficult to mesh with a lot of LDS priorities. 4. our players are often older coming out of college. Would you rather trade for a 25-year old who has been playing in the NFL for 2 years or a 25-year-old who has been playing for BYU the last 2 years? etc. And I'll just put this out there. . .I'm not convinced everyone who COULD go into the NFL SHOULD go into the NFL. If you could make 600K/year for 4 years as a football player or 200K/year for 25 years as a ________. . . how much killing your body worth?

I dunno. . .maybe this is ignorant bias coming through, but I feel a lot of BYU athletes actually graduate with a decent head on their shoulders that can make them happy in ways outside of football; however, a lot of athletes in a lot of other programs have zero plan and zero capability if the NFL doesn't come a knockin'. When there is that kind of desperation, you might see a skewed number in the NFL.