As KW said in his PAC 12 talk, you have to ignore the hype, take it one game at a time.
The best football teams are self motivated, led by player-leadership, who take the tone/culture from the coaches – starting at the top with the head coach. If the player-leadership is taking the leadership mantle, it frees the coaches to focus on strategy, game-planning, etc. Teams that struggle require the coaches to lead, as morale falls apart if adversity strikes.
There’s a lot of CFP hype & pressure creeping in, so as coaches you don’t want to spend a lot of time picking the team off the mat if we stumble out of the gate. The BYU game is a microcosm of how we’re going to handle the hype.
We have to honor the process, be prepared, and execute. After getting down 27-7 last year, we owe ourselves a focused, serious effort, so let’s get this season off the right way.
(If we stub our toes on the 29th, then you fall back and re-emphasize one-game-at-a-time, with winning the league as the primary goal, anything beyond that will take care of itself. We’ll have 2 games to get our act together before USC, if that happens.)