Hey Utah – Make Sure to Thank Lavell on Your Way Out the Door

This weekend’s BYU-Utah contest will certainly be more competitive than we thought just a month ago. Regardless of the outcome, the rivalry will change next year as Utah heads off to the PAC-12 and BYU to independence. As BYU and Utah arrive at this crossroads of sorts, I think it’s only appropriate to pay homage to the man that helped put this game and both these teams on the map. That man is Lavell Edwards.

Let me begin to explain with a personal anecdote:

I grew up in Southern California in the 80’s and early 90’s. Outside of Kirk Gibson hitting the home run off Dennis Eckersley in game one of the 1988 World Series, the greatest sports moment of my childhood was watching BYU beat Miami on ESPN in 1990. The reason that game meant so much to me was that I’d been brought up as a BYU football fan. My old man loved the Cougars and their style of offense. We didn’t have cable TV till probably 1989 so I didn’t see BYU a whole lot on ESPN before then. Nonetheless, I had seen BYU play on TV numerous times. How, might you ask when I lived nowhere near Provo Utah?

The answer is the massive satellite dishes that sit on the sides of LDS church buildings all across the United States. You may have seen them. These dishes are big enough to communicate with MARS, yet the tiny Direct TV dishes on all our roofs these days probably have 10 times the power of the ones I’m describing. As I understand, these dishes were installed to transmit the world-wide general conference of the LDS church to its members. They also happened to broadcast BYU football games on Saturday afternoons.

So my Dad would take me over to the local church and there would be 8-12 guys there huddled around a small TV watching undersized, non-world class speedsters, running precise routes and putting up crazy numbers on the scoreboard. These fans were of course LDS but many of them had zero ties to BYU. They probably should have been home mowing the lawn, tuning up their golf game or at the Rose Bowl watching UCLA play. Instead, Lavell Edwards had capitalized on his built-in audience and turned them into rabid college football and Cougar fans.

So why do I tell this story. Guess where my dad graduated from college? That’s right – The University of Utah. He was a Cougar fan though, and more importantly, a Lavell fan, through and through. I think the first time I ever remember my Dad even referencing Utah Athletics was when Rick Majerus landed the basketball team in the Final Four in 1998.

This scene I’m sure played out all over the Western United Sates and though the games were on local TV in Utah, many a luke warm Utahn began to gravitate to BYU football during this period. So fast forward to 2010 – What does this mean to the BYU/Utah rivalry, Utah Football in general and their being invited to the PAC-12 in 2011?

The early years of the BYU/Utah rivalry were dominated by Utah. However, since my audience doesn’t really care about Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen and the fact that the early days of college football were dominated by likes of Alabama, Notre Dame, Army and Navy, I’d like to show what happened in the BYU/Utah rivalry in what I call the modern era of college football, the era we really care about. Also known as the era in which you could actually watch teams on TV besides the ones mentioned above.

Lavell Edwards, a Utah State graduate, arrived at BYU in 1972. From 1972 to 1992 BYU won the rivalry game againstUtah19/21 times, often by huge margins. BYU’s overall record during that time was 191-64-3.Utahwas 116-130-1 during the same period.

What you can take from the numbers is that while Utah was basically playing intra-mural football for a quarter century, Lavell Edwards was busy revolutionizing college football and building a monster program in a place called Provo, UT. BYU saw their stadium expanded from 45,000 to 65,000 under Lavell Edwards and of course won a national championship in 1984. BYU was really one of the first non power conference teams to be shown regularly on ESPN. In other words, Lavell made BYU matter and by making BYU matter he drew attention to the state of Utah and the University of Utah ultimately benefited as well.

No one outside of Salt Lake County had ever heard of or cared about University of Utah Football prior to the mid-90’s. Prior to Lavell’s emergence, Salt Lake was known simply as the headquarters of the Mormon Church and where the Osmonds were from. What the state also came to be known for was the home of an incredibly fun offensive team that was an All-American quarterback factory. No one in their wildest dreams thought Utah- not BYU – would be invited to join the PAC-10 someday. By Lavell dominating the rivalry the way he did, it caused the Utes enough dismay that they finally turned things around.

To Utah’s credit, since about the mid-90’s they have really developed their program. Ron McBride began to turn the tide and then of course was followed by Urban Meyer, and now Kyle Whittingham (who played for Lavell Edwards at BYU). Utah got a little help from the winter Olympics being awarded to Salt Lake in seeing their stadium transformed from a way below average venue with wooden seats to a very nice 45,000 seat stadium. From there, they have really taken off. From 1993 to 2009, Utah is 10-7 against BYU. Utah has recruited extremely well. They of course had the two perfect seasons and 2 BCS wins. Their success in the past 10-12 years is frankly, superior to BYU’s and they have earned every bit of recognition they’ve received.

 

So as Utah rides off into the Pacific-12 sunset, they know their recent success is allowing the journey to take place. However, they ought to remember just how bad they stunk and respect what Lavell meant to football in the state of Utah. Utah lost out on a generation or two of fans like my Dad and me to Lavell and BYU. Utah is beginning to make up for lost time though by duplicating what Lavell did for nearly 30 years. Congrats to both schools and I can’t wait till Saturday.