PROVO, UTAH, IS a city of about 115,000, nestled into the rocks on the back side of the Rocky Mountains. It is the fourth-largest city in Utah, and it’s made up primarily of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And because of a miraculous run of football prowess and perfect breaks 40 years ago, Provo will forever be known as a national title town.
In 1984, LaVell Edwards’ BYU Cougars rolled to a perfect record, watched as everyone around them fell at just the right time, and celebrated maybe the least likely title in the sport’s history. And 40 years later, they’re positioning themselves for a spot in an expanded playoff that, in a roundabout way, their own success helped to eventually deliver. Kalani Sitake’s unbeaten squad is up to 13th in the AP poll and hosts Oklahoma State Cowboys on ESPN on Friday night (10:15 p.m. ET). Let’s look back at the 1984 title and toward the promise of 2024.
‘You play football, and you win’
“OUR EXPECTATIONS WERE, we were going to win every game,” said ESPN’s Trevor Matich, BYU’s starting center in 1984. “I played in ’79 and ’80 and then ’83 and ’84 — I went on a mission to Mexico in between — and in those years we lost three games.”
If any mid-major program was going to break through in 1984, it was going to be LaVell Edwards’ Cougars. Edwards was BYU’s defensive coordinator before taking over in 1972 and pulling off one of the most unexpected turnarounds in college football history. BYU had never been ranked before Edwards’ hire and had won more than six games in a season just once between 1933-71. He attempted to deploy an innovative, pass-heavy offense, not because he was a devout believer in the forward pass but because, as he wrote in the American Football Coaches Association’s Football Coaching Bible, “In a situation like that, you have to think outside of the box a little and be more creative than usual. My concern was not whether I would be fired, but when. That had been the pattern for many years. I figured that because I probably wasn’t going to make it anyway, I might as well try something radically different. I decided to throw the football, not just the normal 10 or 15 times a game, but 35 to 45 times per game, on any down, from our own end zone to the opponent’s end zone.”
