BYU enters the Big 12 with an all-time 60%-win percentage and a national championship under its belt. But will the wins continue when the Cougars transition to major conference play?
Examining BYU’s football experience is a microcosm of how Rocky Mountain football has evolved over the past century. Like many other regional competitors, BYU has circulated among a variety of minor and mid-major conferences over the years–Rocky Mountain (1922-1937), Mountain States Athletic (1938-1947), Skyline (1948-1961), Western Athletic (1963-1998), and Mountain West (1999-2010)–before going independent in 2011. While several schools, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, and now BYU, have evolved into the big-time, other schools, including Colorado State, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah State, have not.
Even BYU’s national championship year (1984) didn’t carry the glamour you’d expect for a 13-0 team. Playing in the WAC at the time, the Cougars capped off an undefeated season by playing in a non-major bowl (Holiday) against a Michigan Wolverine squad that struggled that year (6-5 regular season).
Still, BYU has made headlines over the years, largely because of its offense, a credit to longtime, signature coach LaVell Edwards and his staff, and a long line of name quarterbacks, including Steve Young, Robbie Bosco, Heisman winner Ty Detmer, and Jim McMahon. The offenses they directed are one of the big reasons the Cougars have spent nearly 300 weeks in the AP poll and played in 40 bowl games over the years.
But being an outsider to Power 5 play has been a consistent issue. Yes, the Cougs won—often big and consistently (eight 10-win seasons since 2000)–but they often did both by vanquishing lesser teams, often in the friendly confines of raucous 60-plus thousand-seat LaVell Edwards Stadium.
While they’ve feasted on teams like New Mexico (45-14), UTEP (29-7), and UNLV (17-3) and had their way with teams from the Group of 5 conferences (e.g., Conference USA, 38-11-1 and American, 27-8), BYU has come nowhere close to that mark against Power 5 teams, going 120-186-7 cumulatively through 2022 against current PAC-12, SEC, Big 12, Big 10, and ACC teams. The stunning part of that record is this: those 186 defeats constitute nearly half (43%) of BYU’s all-time football losses.
Despite that record, I believe that the Cougars should have been in a major conference long before now, and I thought the PAC-12 would be it. That wasn’t to be, and non-admission posed a problem. BYU had outgrown the WAC and Mountain West (winning 23 conference championships), and independent status brought other issues. One was having to play Wow!/What? schedules (e.g., Notre Dame and Utah Tech in 2022 and USC and Idaho State in 2021). There wasn’t any conference media money, either. And that’s just in football. The basketball team has been playing in the West Coast Conference. Powerhouse Gonzaga is there, but so are Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount.
That won’t do, so hail the sports gods for the Big 12. The BYU Cougars will now be able to compete on the highest stage against formidable teams. But hold on: BYU has an odd starting football schedule. The Cougars play only one league newcomer (Cincinnati at home), and they have to go on the road against TCU (last year’s national runner-up) and Texas (the team media picks to win the conference title). Neither outcome seems fair.
Overall, though, it’s a reasonable slate—ranked #47 in toughness by FanNation—easier than many of the Big 12 teams, largely because of season-opening home games against Sam Houston State and Southern Utah. Following a test at Arkansas, the Cougars might open league play 2-0 if they win at KU on September 23 and beat the Bearcats the following week in their Big 12 home opener.
If is a big word, though, especially if the defense, which struggled last year (400+ yards per game), doesn’t come through. The new DC, Jay Hill, should help, and he has an array of newcomers to plug leaks, including DL Jackson Cravens and corner Eddie Heckard. But the biggest news is at quarterback, where the well-traveled Kedon Slovis, late of Pittsburgh by way of USC, has arrived in Provo. Over four previous seasons, Slovis has passed for nearly 10,000 yards with a 66% completion rate, and he threw only 33 interceptions in nearly 1300 passing attempts. Slovis will throw to four returning receivers this season, led by junior Keanu Hill.
Head Coach Kalani Sitaki has a good record in Provo (56-33, 62% wins over seven seasons), but his teams have finished only twice in the AP Top 25 at season’s end (2020, 2021), and the Cougars were 8-5 last year, beating mediocre Group of Five SMU (7-6) in the New Mexico Bowl. It’s no secret that BYU fans want more even as the competition toughens. While a 6-6 season record (4-5 in the Big 12) would be an accomplishment as this analyst sees it, the question is whether that would keep Sitaki off the hot seat.
Of course, this team has higher aspirations than an even split, and Slovis is good enough to carry this team. One of this season’s most intriguing questions is whether he will.
______________
NOTE: Text is drawn from comments made on Wolfman’s Call with Host Dale Wolfley (Tuesday, July 31 edition, 4 p.m. Eastern). Watch live or archived on YouTube at the West Virginia Football at the Voice of College Football or on Facebook.
SOURCES: This article draws on material published in Sports Reference, College Football, BYU, and Kedon Slovis; Winsipedia.com; Lindy’s College Football, National 2023 Preview; and publically accessible information from Wikipedia and other sources about Brigham Young University.
