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Ravell Call, Deseret News
Editor’s note: First in an occasional series exploring BYU’s 1984 national football championship.
In the beginning, there was no more of a grand scheme to become the top-ranked team in America than there was to light a match to the way national champions had been decided for more than a century.
Truth was, legendary and revolutionary weren’t among the adjectives used to describe expectations for the 1984 BYU football team. The Cougars would probably win the Western Athletic Conference, like they always did, and play some semi-good team in the Holiday Bowl, also like they always did. But national contenders? Maybe they were riding an 11-game winning streak from the previous season, but gone from that team were quarterback Steve Young, tight end Gordon Hudson and linebacker Todd Shell, each one a first-round draft choice, as well as Young’s top two wide receivers. Robbie Bosco, BYU’s new starting quarterback — the heir apparent — had thrown a grand total of 28 passes in a career that so far amounted to watching Steve Young become Steve Young. When the AP released its preseason top 20, BYU was nowhere to be found.
Then, in the first live broadcast of a regular-season college football game ever aired on ESPN, the Cougars opened the season by defeating No. 3-ranked Pitt, 20-14, at Pitt Stadium.
It was only then, in the afterglow of an improbable win with the entire country watching, that players started remembering something one of their captains had said in a preseason team meeting.
Starting offensive guard Craig Garrick was a thinker, a plotter, an observer of what today would be called analytics. He’d looked at the schedule after the Pittsburgh game: Baylor and Tulsa at Cougar Stadium in Provo, then the usual WAC suspects, followed by the annual battle for the Old Wagon Wheel…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/unlikeliest-champions-235251144.html
Author : Deseret News
Publish date : 2024-10-04 23:52:51
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