How Two Schools From Utah BROKE College Football

[Music] BYU and the University of Utah these are the two biggest schools in this beautiful yet bizarre State they have some of the most scenic Stadium backdrops in America located 45 minutes apart BYU and Utah have a rich and storied rivalry that dates back to the 19th century oh there's also Utah State but nobody cares about them anyways when BYU and Utah compete versus one another it's known as the The Holy War the Mormons vers the ex Mormons white shirt and ties versus just some regular guys the kid who just got back from his mission versus the kid who never got his Eagle Scout either way just know that these two schools don't like each other now despite the rich history between BYU and Utah on a local scale these two University's football programs have both made a profound impact on the sport in a way almost no smaller program has been able to at one point in time what they each individually accomplished truly broke college football and you see this all stems from the unique way college football has historically decided its [Music] Champion unlike most other team sports in America at the college or Pro level the champions of division 1A or now known as FBS has been historically decided by voters interestingly enough even though college football is sanctioned by the NCAA the NCAA themselves does not decide the champion so how do you decide the most deserving between a few undefeated teams at the end of the year well how about a collection of sports riters decide your fate this has also been understood historically as deciding the mythical National Champion since there was often not an opportunity for the best teams that year to play each other now the elephant in the room here is why prior to 2014 did college football at the highest level not use a tournament format literally every other NCAA Division has used one for decades well the reason is because of bowl games in 1902 the concept of an East versus West type game came to fruition when Michigan traveled to Pasadena California to play Stanford in the tournament East West football game sponsored by the Tournament of Roses Association fun fact the game was such a Beatdown that Stanford's captain Ralph fiser requested to quit the contest with 8 minutes to go it was such a mismatch that another game did not resume for another 14 years but it did make its way back and became an annual event in 1923 the name of the game was changed to the Rose Bowl the name of the newly built bowl-shaped stadium in passadena eventually other cities saw the promotional value for tourism that the Tournament of Roses parade and Rose bll carried and they made their own celebratory end of season games they also made use of the bull named concept even if the stadium that hosted the game wasn't built like a bowl it wasn't until the 40s where the bowl concept really began to take off and the major college football conferences began signing contracts to have their Champions play each other this is the most significant of three key reasons why a tournament was never put in place so anyways I'll go more into bowl games later for now let's go back to how national champions are decided by the 1950s college football at its highest level had become an exclusive Club unlike Pro Sports where the worst teams get priority selection of the top prospects college football programs can recruit any High School Prospect they like limited to a certain number of scholarships per year as well as certain rules about what they can and can't give a prospect now the real game here for recruiters is how much you can get away with the more money and resources a program has the more they can pull off this formula leads to the big programs getting bigger while the small programs stay small these two schools on screen are from the same division of college football yet have two completely different levels of success so anyways over time six prestigious conferences developed around the country by the 1950s featuring The Bluest of blood universities like I previously said the champions from these major conferen es would play each other in bowl games at the end of the year based on contracts with the bowl games no individual bowl game was necessarily a national title game but they could have major implications on the voting for the mythical National Champion That season also there's a little thing known as voter bias the following quote is from a 2010 publication from the Department of management at the University of North Florida quote because of the geographical distribution of Voters and the virtual impossibility that a voter is able to watch all teams play in any given week voters may be inclined to give more favorable treatment to those teams for which they have more information and or towards teams with whom they are affiliated so voters rank the top 25 teams in the country week after week this process is far from a science it's at best a guessing game by people who give some teams priority treatment so when you have voter bias as well as established college programs from these major conferences it's nearly impossible to receive any recognition as a small school from 1950 to 1983 16 Division 1A teams went undefeated from these smaller conferences and none received a single National Championship vote from a plethora of voting Outlets the most interesting program out of these has to be Toledo by the end of 1971 Toledo finished the year on a 35-game win streak dating back two SE Seasons prior it's the second longest win streak in division 1A history and they had the number one statistical defense in the nation despite not losing a single game in 3 years they never ranked higher than number 14 in the AP poll and number 13 in the UPI poll after blowing out Richmond in the Tangerine Bowl it had to make you wonder if they deserve to be considered as the mythical Champion or at the very least play in an important game against a worthy opponent now I'll definitely push back on this it's fair to say their level of competition was nowhere near the big schools not a single team they played was ranked also number one Nebraska went undefeated that year and comparing the rosters Toledo had three drafted players on that team while Nebraska had 22 if these two schools would have played we probably would have had a Georgia TCU situation so perhaps the ranking system is for the most part warranted after the AP and UPI poll became the most recognized ranking systems they decided their first consensus national champion in 1950 and moving forward we only saw national champions from the major conferences as well as prestigious Independents like Notre Dame for all the small schools out there who play other small schools and think you're deserving well it's best you stay in your lane winning your conference is your best case scenario you're never going to sniff a national title oh wait a minute 1984 happened pass to win the game B looking stamell throws it sh down I guess the most important thing BYU is number one that's for sure you know that's what we're thinking and I don't think there's no one else in the country that can be number one you almost forgot this video was about these guys in 1984 BYU who played in the small Western Athletic Conference did the unthinkable as they were voted consensus national champions there was definitely push back Brian Gumble famously remarked quote who have they played Bo diddly Tech and many agreed with him the best team BYU played had four losses they barely beat a six and5 Michigan team in their Bull game and BYU fans at the time will tell you that this wasn't even their best team of that era in the near 75y year history of consensus national champions this 1984 BYU team is the one and only standalone team to be named national champions from a non major conference how is this even possible well here's how after Decades of mediocrity I'm talking 50 years of no Conference titles and never even being ranked in the top 25 a man named level Edwards took over the BYU program immediately Edwards turned them into a small school Powerhouse a big fish in a small pond with his highly successful pass heavy attack in 1980 Jim McMahon led the nation in passing by over 1,400 yd ahead of second place QBs from BYU led the nation in passing in 79 80 83 and 84 it helps that they played weak defenses in the western Athletic Conference but still the success of BYU after how terrible they were cannot be overstated this highlevel success attracted serious attention from around the country this was due to a few factors namely success in the Holiday Bowl versus solid programs like a very hyped team in 1980 with Eric Dickerson also against ranked Washington State both wins were dramatic the game versus SMU is probably the most insane comeback in college football history BYU was down by 20 with less than 3 minutes to go and somehow won that game the other Factor was the level of players BYU was producing namely at quarterback by 1984 they had produced five Pro quarterbacks three of which were first round picks they also had seven players drafted in 198 81 this wasn't just some small school that was smashing cupcakes this team had legit Talent they even had a starting lineman that became a decent coach later on not sure where Andrew Walter Reed is today I do believe he's in the NFL somewhere but I couldn't confirm that but anyways let's go back to that 1984 Squad The Proven Talent these squads had possessed in the prior years was certainly one of their Championship factors it aided in the respect that they received from the polls the next factor is how it 1984 they played on the road at number three pit to open the season and one big win right BYU immediately went from unranked to number 13 in the polls however this was only impressive because pit was heavily overrated on paper they finished that season with a 37-1 record but it seems like when voters vote they mostly take into account how strong an opponent seemed the week of competition not weeks after the fact the next Factor was that BYU went undefeated finishing with a win versus a historical Powerhouse in the Holiday Bowl now Michigan is a much bigger name than how good their 1984 team actually was they finished seventh in the Big 10 with a mediocre 6 and5 record plus it didn't help that they lost their starting quarterback Jim Harbaugh during the season if he would have played in that game maybe he could have helped prevent the only small school to ever win a National Title although I think he's made up for it later on so BYU game favor in the polls because of Prior success and voters overrating their wins versus pit and Michigan however there's more to it this was a famously weak year for Championship candidates there was no other undefeated teams U coach Barry Switzer talked trash but his 91 in1 team lost to Washington in the Orange Bowl that Washington team was the only other team in the conversation for a national title their only loss was at number 14 USC and they beat Michigan on the road more convincingly than BYU and their win versus OU was much more impressive than any win BYU had so how did BYU get votes over Washington for the national title in the end the argument can be best summed up by this nobody beat anybody who beat BYU BYU received the rare support of those who voted due to the factors I named it's such an anomaly that like I said it hadn't happened before or since and here's an interesting followup BYU had five players selected in the 1985 draft Washington did have two more players selected but this is a much smaller disparity compared to that Toledo and Nebraska example I mentioned previously also BYU and Washington faced off the following year and BYU dominated that game it is widely believed that the various systems devised over the years played a crucial role in the changes made to college football to prevent another team like BYU somehow winning the National Championship it's why we haven't had another example of this ever since in fact in 1996 BYU once again had an incredibly stacked team finishing the regular season 13-1 and ranked in the top five although they did lose a game there was no other team in the nation that went undefeated and not only did BYU not receive a National Championship vote they didn't even get a chance to play in any of the major Bull games at the time what made it even more embarrassing was that coach leel Edwards was flown out to New York to take part in the selection show just for BYU to not be selected it looked like an Anti-Trust situation because it was all about money once you see just how much money the university missed out on it makes sense that BYU was Furious about this this later resulted in BYU threatening lawsuits and later a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was held as a team we just wanted what we thought was a fair shot the basic message Mr chairman is that if David wants to slay Goliath he better do it during basketball season as a result of these hearings the BYU rule was put in place which made it so if one of these smaller Conference teams ranked in the top six they would make one of these major bowl games no matter what some justice had been served But ultimately with voters still deciding where teams were ranked the chance that one of these smaller Conference teams would get to a national title were long gone for BYU leel Edwards coached his last season in 2000 ending nearly three decades of historically unmatched success for mid- major programs now throughout BYU's reign of dominance no team was more bothered by this than the school 45 minutes north of them throughout this rivalry's early history Utah crushed BYU so consistently you could hardly call this a rivalry the first 53 times these teams faced off BYU had won a measle eight times for 75 years Utah was Far and Away the better program but then leel Edwards took over BYU in 1972 And The Script flipped from 1972 to 1992 Utah could only scrap together two wins against their rival otherwise BYU blew them out nearly every time they played during the stretch BYU was routinely talked about nationally while Utah limped their way through multiple coaches unable to find much success finally in 1993 Utah had gotten their feet under them with head coach Ron McBride and in a 10-year stretch they had beaten BYU more times than not Ron McBride was fired after the program began to falter in the early 2000s but still he had revived the program although it was still a far cry from what their Rivals had done throughout the 80s and 90s to be fair to reach the standard leel Edwards set at BYU was an overwhelming improbability you could make a case that he's the greatest college coach of all time or at the very least one of the greatest coaches who managed to revolutionize the passing game and yet somehow you could make a case that what Utah accomplished in the 2000s was just as if not more impressive but to get the context of what Utah was able to pull off we need to understand the BCS you know what's crazy the BCS that's crazy I think when you take a step back now and look at the BCS three of the six years the thing frankly has not worked after backto back co- national champions were named in 1990 1991 it was agreed that something needed to be done to lessen the chances of two teams being named national champions in the same year a bulll coalition was formed to try and increase the probability of number one and number two playing in a bll game but this only lasted until 1994 then the bowl Alliance was formed but not all the big conferences were involved it wasn't until 1998 where the Big 10 and pack 10 finally joined the alliance which then became known as The Bull championship series or the BCS the BCS officially established a different standard of bulll games there were the regular bowls and then the prestigious BCS bowls with a rotating schedule of one representing the national championship each year the original BCS formula Incorporated the AP and coaches poll along with an average of various computer rankings the important part about these years for this video is that throughout this time schools from the smaller conferences were excluded due to conference tie-ins this dubbed them as non-automatic qualifiers or nonaq schools the four BCS Bulls laid out as the following six of the teams automatically qualified due to winning their conference and the final two teams were the best of the rest typically one or two lost schools from the AQ conferences however in the4 2005 season the BCS was busted bring your lights back up bring it back up surprise what Utah had pulled off in 2004 was shocking considering two years prior they finished five- six and fired their head coach but the guy that they replaced him with proved to be a Football Genius unranked and ranked and say we'll meet Urban Meers Bowling Green Falcons Urban Meyer was a young fiery coach who got his first chance to be a head coach at Bowling Green in 2001 it was a memorable 2-year stretch where the program reached an AP ranking of 15 it's still the highest blowing green has ever been ranked to this day from the moment Meyer took over Utah his effect on the program was immediate he had developed an offensive attack that combined elements of the West Coast offense and a traditional run-based option attack and put them to use out of a spread shotgun formation this was gamebreaking and through this revolutionary offensive system Utah finished 2003 with a 10 and2 record and Meyer was named the Mountain West Conference coach of the year 2004 was even more impressive with the offense led by quarterback Alex Smith and the defense led by Eric wed Utah crushed everybody they played including their final regular season game versus BYU Once Upon a Time in the land of the Mountain West lived a proud but quiet School known as Utah Utah the first school from a non-bcs conference to break into the system they'll play pit in the fiesta B this run of dominance was so remarkable that despite not a single non-aq School making a BCS Bowl since the conception of the BCS no one had a single issue with Utah being placed in the Fiesta Bowl crazy enough this matchup versus pit was controversial not because of Utah but rather because of pit making it unlike how anyone could have predicted before the season the nonaq school was heavily favored versus the Big East Champion and when the game played out Utah did what they had done all season they dominated a dream come true Marty Johnson for the little team that could from the Mountain West this 2004 Utah team finished with the following accomplishments number one no losses and every single win was by double digits the only game that wasn't a blowout was their 14-point win versus Air Force number two their roster featured nine future NFL players including 2005 number one overall pick Alex Smith and number three they became the first BCS Buster finishing the season ranked number four in the country this wasn't a national championship but to accomplish this two years into a new coaching tenure at a mid- major is remarkable at the end of the day all you can do is play who's in front of you and win unfortunately Urban Meyer left for Florida the only coach who could compare to BYU's level Edwards was gone typically these mid- major programs who have a sudden rise and a coach that leaves for the big time fall off however this story only gets more impressive following Urban Meyer's exit Kyle Whittingham had a tough decision to make following that Fiesta B run Whittingham had been offered a head coach job both at Utah and BYU a decision that he struggled mightily with for 4 long days this was because he had been a defensive coach at Utah for 10 years but had also been a a star player back in his day for BYU whatever path he chose he was going to upset the other side and there was no going back he ended up taking the Utah job the first few seasons were a bumpy ride Utah had been fine but nothing close to that incredible 2004 season that all changed however in [Music] 2008 Utah came into the 2008 season unranked but managed to survive on the road versus Michigan to open up the season from there Utah continued to roll late in the regular season a clutch last minute touchdown versus number 11 TCU kept the undefeated season alive on the slam touchdown Utah try Brown which set the stage for one of the most hyped rivalry weeks in Utah BYU history with a three-point lead entering the fourth quarter Utah picked off BYU's Max Hall multiple times to run away with a commanding victory for the second time Utah had busted the BCS except this time around they weren't playing a three loss pit team they were playing Nick Sabin Alabama Alabama had been the number one team in the country throughout the second half of the Season that was until they blew a fourth quarter lead to number two Florida in the SEC Championship Urban Meyer had gotten the best of the Crimson Tide and now they had a chance to decimate his old team entering the Sugar Bowl Bama was heavily favored they were much closer geographically than Utah for this game essentially making it another home game Utah had done well in the Mountain West but this was SEC country it was time for Bama to prove their might not knowing where the ball is by the time he figures it out Bron godre is diving into the End Zone from just inside the seven diving for the End Zone touchdown aana touchdown [Music] talk about being punched in the mouth a 21-0 lead in the first quarter was a haym maker that Bama never fully recovered from they creeped their way back into the game but Utah slammed the door late winning in convincing fashion by two touchdowns it was a victory of seismic proportion it may not have been a national title like BYU but it was certainly a more tested and impressive season a year and a half later Utah agreed to to join the pack 10 and 14 years later both BYU and Utah are members of the Big 12 making them two of the very few schools that moved from mid- major conferences to the power five so it's second down and 10 for BYU fourman Rush throwing it over the middle it's CAU Andrew dor touchdown BYU [Music] attempt to try to send it to overtime and it hit the ight good and the game does itend and for a third time the Utah fans storm the field it is officially over third time of the CH for the fans [Music] n [Music]