The day for BYU has finally arrived, even if the Cougars haven’t. There’s too much work yet ahead for that last part, the idiomatic part.
But the more technical, traditional part is true: The Cougars officially are in the Big 12 as of Saturday. Their path to that arrival has been twisted, complicated and, for some, grueling, cluttered with obstacles. Ironic it is that at a school that places so much emphasis on codes of worthiness, BYU’s competitive worthiness failed to qualify it for so long.
A trip down Memory Lane.
There were the old Western Athletic Conference days, the Mountain West days, the days of independence, and, finally, entrance into the P5 realm, a designation that itself is now in flux or, at least, the threat of flux.
Throughout its sports history, certainly since its football program rose up in the 1970s to greater prominence under LaVell Edwards, BYU has forever operated under a cloud of suspicion, not because of anything nefarious, although the school’s religious foundations have brought periods of wariness and reservation and condemnation regarding race, LGBTQ issues, and academic freedoms.
Primarily, though, the Cougars were viewed with cocked brow because of the level of their opponents, against whom they were having what was for them unprecedented success.
Nothing underscored that more than 1984, the year that became a season of triumph for BYU, but also of scorn and, in some cases, ridicule. Mention the term “Bo Diddley Tech” to any longtime college football observer and they remember with exactness who said it — Bryant Gumbel — and what it represented — nearly every team BYU played — and its context — raising doubt about the Cougars’ merit regarding being named national champions. Indeed, undefeated BYU was that fall, but who had the Cougars defeated? Yeah, a bunch of Bo Diddley Techs.
You know the story. They were voted in as champs, but a whole lot of skeptics found them less than worthy. Some suggest that the era of the Bowl Alliance and, later, the BCS was put in place to prevent another BYU-type school from gaining that privilege.
It mattered little that the Cougars were loading quarterbacks, the most important players on any football team, into the NFL. Or that some of them would go on to win Super Bowls and league MVPs. It didn’t matter that they occasionally beat teams like Miami and Oklahoma and Texas and Nebraska and Notre Dame and Michigan because on other occasions they got thumped by opponents like that.
Most importantly, BYU didn’t face a full schedule of power teams in conference play because their leagues lacked a regular dose of such competition. In former days, there were the Utahs and the TCUs, but not enough of them. So it was that BYU football was respected — to a point, but uncertainty remained on account of its proved periodic ability to beat a marquee team, but not a full slate of of them. And concurrently, nobody would let it into a top-drawer league as a means of showing what it could do. The Cougars were caught in a trap.
When Utah and TCU moved on to the Pac-12 and the Big 12, it was evidenced that playing higher-caliber teams on the reg required talent and depth, more of it than was available to schools in leagues like the WAC and the MWC. For the Utes, it came, but it took some time.
Instead of facing the humiliation of being left behind when Utah went throttle up to its new league, BYU, rather than remaining with the New Mexicos and Colorado States and Wyomings, flipped to independence by way of its deal with ESPN.
Lord knows they tried to get invited into a P5 conference, but nobody was having them. Even as Bronco Mendenhall’s teams piled up double-digit wins, he remarked that “independence is unsustainable.”
And as the Cougars stacked up noble opponents early in seasons of independence, they were forced to finish up with an annual late schedule about which even their devout fans couldn’t give a rip.
They had knocked on doors — almost getting into the Big 12 when Rondo Fehlberg was the school’s AD, having proponents years ago inside the old Pac-10 — mostly coaches and athletic directors, not school presidents — wanting them to join that league. Didn’t happen. They tried the Big 12, again. Nope. Always, the Cougars claimed they were good enough, popular enough, enough of a draw, enough of a football and basketball presence to add more to a big conference than they would take away. No. No. No. Some power brokers didn’t like BYU’s geographic location, some were put off by its connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and some of that religion’s policies and particulars, some highlighted that BYU wasn’t a proper “research institution.”
Well. That all ended when the Big 12, fighting now for its own security and survival, rather recently announced that it planned to invite in BYU, Cincinnati, UCF and Houston, gathering in what had so long been left wanting.
Not anymore.
Now, as of Saturday, it is up to the Cougars to demonstrate what they have claimed for the better part of five decades — that they are worthy, that they do belong, that they can compete at the higher or highest level of college football … and basketball … and every other sport.
Best case, championships will take time to achieve. That’s fair. But even in their initial seasons, they can show bits and pieces of what they are, what they purport themselves to be — quality competitors. Vegas thinks they will struggle in the coming season in football and basketball, and they probably will.
But, at long last, they are on a road toward an opportunity for legitimacy, where doubts about demonstrated success should be left at the door. Earning that success will be the hard part. They’ve gotten what they wished for. Competitively speaking, we’ll discover how careful they should have been in hoping and fighting and wishing for it.
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