Let’s get straight to three points here, and then wander through them bit by bit, thereafter.
Motivation, and a running back who was and is absolutely full of it, and a brutal fumble, were the stories in Saturday’s Independence Bowl played between BYU and UAB.
People all week had wondered how motivated the Cougars would be for and in this backseat bowl game, but there was no question about how much motivation — and sheer drive — was inside of Tyler Allgeier. The BYU sophomore broke the school’s single-season rushing record on Saturday, rumbling and rolling for 192 yards against the Blazers. His yardage gained after contact was, at times, beyond impressive, bumping more toward ridiculous. Same as it’s been all year for the single force that did more for BYU’s success than any other player.
What was the level of motivation for the rest of the Cougars? More on that in a minute.
High or low, vicious as it is, the game’s ultimate result tipped and settled at the end — time running short, game on the line, BYU moving for the winning touchdown — on the fumble of a completed pass at the UAB 28-yard line, essentially ending the Cougars’ hopes for victory.
The final numbers on the board wrote the days’ last line: UAB 31, BYU 28.
“Our guys really wanted this game, wanted to prove something to the country,” Blazers head coach Bill Clark warbled into the cameras afterward.
And what exactly did BYU’s guys want? Is there an echo in here? To duck out down a back alley, forgetting that any of this happened?
Probably. Maybe.
Some of the Cougars never wanted to be at this bowl to begin with, right?
That was a question that blew far past just this bowl game, a question that has been a factor in bowl-game results for a long, long time, and it certainly was a topic leading up to and, as it turned out, straight through this particular affair.
Everybody knows that Shreveport isn’t exactly a college football postseason garden spot, foremost among them the Cougars, especially given what might have been. What actually was, though, transformed the industrial town in Louisiana into BYU’s own little piece of football hell.
When asked afterward what happened, Kalani Sitake was careful to give UAB credit for its play, but he said: “The game did not go as we wanted,” adding that large chunks of the reasons for the undesired result were “breakdowns.”
Breakdowns usually come from a lack of focus.
A lack of focus often can be traced to … uh-huh, motivation or an absence of it.
It’s a theory, anyway.
The Cougars, having missed out on a New Year’s Six bowl against a splashy opponent and in their collective mind a more deserved opportunity, instead getting stuck with an opponent that finished second in the West Division of Conference USA, had a mental hill to climb.
That hill turned into a mountain.
None of this, no matter the outcome, was what the 13th-ranked Cougars figured was a happy cap on an otherwise sweet season.
It got less happy, with sloppy defensive play and inconsistent offense, an attack that was hampered by the absence of the injured Jaren Hall, who stood on the sideline throughout, yielding to backup quarterback, Baylor Romney.
Still, if the Cougars ever gave voice to their overall pregame disappointment, they muttered it so quietly under their breaths, the way Popeye did in the old cartoons, speaking to adult viewers in mumbled undertones, while talking out loud to the kids, it was indistinguishable.
There was one sure way to know they didn’t want to be where they were: Because they are humans.
That was the biggest intrigue in this game — how would the Cougars show?
And the intrigue turned into a bad response.
There is a problem with that conclusion, however: The difficulty in clearly seeing the role motivation plays in any or every bowl game is discerning precisely where the talent and application of that talent ends and where the excuse-making begins.
Here’s what I mean: The first chapter in the bowl-game loser’s handbook is the one that commences with, “Well, we didn’t really care about winning, anyway,” which implies that had the defeated side really tried, really wanted to win, it could and would have.
But that’s even worse than not being athletically good enough to beat the other dudes.
Naturally, the winner wants to hear nothing about such nonsense. UAB was pleased as punch with the result, and was perfectly willing to praise itself properly for it.
Where that line of demarcation, of de-motivation, was drawn on Saturday remains undetermined, just … theory. What was certain is that BYU wasn’t up to the task of beating a team that had lost to Georgia by 49 points, and also to Liberty, Rice and UTSA.
The fact that Romney was starting at QB didn’t seem like it should have mattered. But he struggled just enough against a Blazer defense that heretofore was highly ranked against CUSA competition.
It troubled BYU’s attack, as well.
The final stats indicated that the score was no fluke.
Total yards gained: UAB 412, BYU 394. Passing yards: UAB 189, BYU 195. Rushing yards: UAB 223, BYU 199. First downs: UAB 23, BYU 18. Total plays: UAB 66, BYU 58. Time of possession: UAB 35:27, BYU 24:33.
You get the idea.
UAB went up, 14-zip, BYU tied it. UAB went ahead, BYU came back, taking the lead. UAB went up, again, BYU bounced back, UAB edged ahead, BYU could not answer.
UAB, indeed, had more motivation than BYU did, but it had talent and a dash of luck, too.
On a drive to potentially end the game in the Cougars’ favor, receiver Samson Nacua fumbled a Romney pass deep in UAB territory, and with mere minutes remaining, BYU’s defense got shoved into defeat.
BYU, on attack, did what it’s done all season, namely depended on Allgeier’s power runs, and, for a while, it appeared as though that strategy might work again, that he might lift the entire team on his shoulders and legs, taking it to victory.
But … no.
One thing’s for sure — Allgeier’s motivation should never be questioned. Nobody can run the way he does, churning forward, dragging defenders with him, and have any of that put in doubt.
That running back is a full-grown man, a motivated man.
The rest of the Cougars … um, not so sure.
So, draw your own conclusion by filling in the blank in the following sentence with a) or b).
BYU got beat by UAB in the Independence Bowl because _______.
a) the Cougars were unmotivated and unfocused.
b) the Cougars weren’t as talented as the Blazers.
What say you?
The question of motivation has been asked forever.
Or, at least since Nebraska’s loss to Arizona State in the 1975 Fiesta Bowl, when the highly-ranked Huskers, disappointed to be relegated to that new, yet-undistinguished bowl game out yonder in the west desert somewhere against the unwashed Sun Devils, supposedly voted not to play in it. The story goes that they were persuaded by administrators to go ahead and accept the invitation. They did, and promptly got beat by ASU, 17-14, in what was an historical football moment in Tempe.
Had Nebraska really wanted to win, been motivated to win …
Yeah, the sad sentence in the handbook’s first chapter.
Is there a place now for BYU in that chapter, seeing that the only team the Cougars wanted to be compared to in Alabama wasn’t this one?
Maybe a guess here, among us, doesn’t matter.
But a guess lingers still.
BYU got beat by UAB, a victorious team that wanted to prove something in a bowl game it wanted to play in.
UAB beat BYU, a defeated team that proved nothing in a bowl game it never wanted from jump.
