BYU football finally delivers result the College Football Playoff is begging for

Kalani Sitake is Batman. He is the night. He is vengeance. He is eyeliner-streaked, sweat-matted Robert Pattinson at 4 AM in his basement. His football team only grows stronger with the rising of the moon, and with justice as his greatest ally, Sitake's BYU Cougars are a force of winning in the landscape of college football.

But like the Batman, Sitake has only one rule: he will never kill.

I don't mean this in the literal sense (though I suspect his record is fairly clean as far as bloodshed is concerned), I mean that a Kalani Sitake-coached team does not relish in the opportunity to dominate, humiliate, and run up the score on his prey. The Cougars have long been criticized this season for apparently struggling to pull ahead in winning efforts. BYU wins 24-21 at Colorado. They snuck out of Tuscon in double-overtime. They squandered a double-digit win against Utah in the hopes of simply running out the clock and letting the game expire, instead allowing the Utes to reach the end zone and narrow the difference to 3.

Much of this is by design (though I'm sure they'd prefer to win a tad more comfortably most weeks), as was described by Sitake in the TCU postgame.

"I just want to win the game," he said. "Winning is the best style to me."

This comes after a 44-13 victory, however. And those 'style points' that Kalani insists he's averse to may be exactly what the observing eyes of the College Football Playoff selection committee will be watching for when evaluating every competitor for the final 12-team bracket.

Style points are what have boosted the Utes to 13th in the rankings, just one spot behind the very BYU team they fell against, and style points could likewise help BYU shed the accusations of fraudulence and fortune. But Sitake would not kill. That is, until they faced TCU.

BYU's defense smothered a potent TCU offense, and the offense ran all over a seemingly helpless Horned Frog resistance. The Cougars controlled this game in every facet, in every moment, and made a statement victory against a quality, bowl-eligible opponent. The Cougars were banished outside the top 10 and outside the 12-team playoff for a blowout road loss against a Texas Tech team that could very well be ranked in the top 5 this coming week.

Has the damage been done, or has BYU football finally proved their worth to the powers that be? Surely they jump Texas with the Longhorns collecting their third loss against the Georgia Bulldogs (a slaughter akin to BYU's slip in Lubbock, for what it's worth), but what to make of an Oregon team with a weaker resume? How far does Alabama fall, now with losses to Florida State and Oklahoma? How high does a two-loss OU jump with a loss to Texas, but a win against the Crimson Tide?

I don't envy the College Football Playoff committee's weekly dilemma, but I advocate for the elevation of the Vampire Cougs.

Kalani Sitake is absolutely right about winning being the best policy. Indeed, if the Cougars finish the regular season 11-1, and upset the Red Raiders in Arlington (assuming Tech maintains its juggernaut image and wins out as well), an automatic qualifier will be stamped on the Cougars' name, and they'll see the postseason tournament. But does an 11-2 BYU football team reach the final as an at-large? That result is severely in question -- in large part to the Cougars' distaste for blowouts.