In the love-fest that was the back-and-forth between Kalani Sitake and Deion Sanders at the Alamo Bowl, the BYU coach used a word to describe the Colorado Buffaloes that turned out to be neither precise, nor prophetic.
“Dangerous.”
He never could have been more overjoyed to be so wrong.
It was his own team that fit that description.
Dangerous and devastating — for Coach Prime’s guys.
There’s no polite way to say this here, so we’ll go with the impolite: The Buffaloes got their shorts, shirts, shoulder pads, socks, jocks, shoes handed to them on Saturday night in San Antonio. They were punched hard. They got their football souls ripped away from them by BYU, via the count of 36-14.
Turns out, warm-and-fuzzy-and-determined togetherness really can trump and triumph over high-heralded talent when it matters most. Or maybe the truth is that the talent wasn’t all that one-sided, after all. Either way, it mattered in a bowl game that BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff famously had called “the people’s Big 12 championship,” having noted that the two teams that equaled Arizona State and Iowa State in their league records, but that on account of technicalities were left out, had something to prove in a dome named after one of the most infamous defeats in North American history.
And defeat is definitely what the Cougars dealt Colorado in the people’s game.
Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders (2) is hit by BYU linebackers Harrison Taggart, left, and Isaiah Glasker, right, during the first half of the Alamo Bowl NCAA college football game, Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Articulating how it happened could be considered not just impolite, but cruel, a bit like using tweezers to pull the wings and legs off a fly, plucking the limbs away, one by one.
Should we go there with specificity? Yeah, OK. But then, stay tuned, we’ll zoom out for the big BYU picture, the better stuff. There are real and happy conclusions to draw about the Cougars, what they’ve done and what they could yet do.
But first, the explicit ugly about those other dudes: The Buffaloes couldn’t run the ball, and BYU knew it. So, the Cougars smartly pressured quarterback Shedeur Sanders, sometimes by way of extra resources, but often with a standard four-man rush, dropping seven defenders into coverage, complicating Sanders’ intention to fire the ball over and through the back-end of BYU’s resistance. Even an intelligent QB, a projected high NFL draft pick who happened to have Travis Hunter, the Heisman winner, as a target, couldn’t quite solve what the Cougars were throwing back at him.
He was pressured and sacked, on a couple of occasions some 16 and 23 yards behind the line of scrimmage. A rather singular highlight for Colorado was a 58-yard Hunter reception in the first half, but even that couldn’t conjure any points. Check that, another impressive reception by Hunter led to the Buffs’ first score deep into the third quarter, when they were down by 27 points.
On the flip side, BYU did its damage with aggression — on attack and on special teams. For example, after the Cougars went ahead, 10-zip, Sitake called for an onside kick, which BYU successfully recovered. Another third-phase play, a punt return by Parker Kingston went for a touchdown, making it 17-nothing. Two 50-plus-yard field goals by Will Ferrin worked additional wonders.
It was 20-0 at the break, a margin that in truth could have been substantially larger without a number of BYU mistakes, the kinds that had plagued the Cougars in their two defeats in their last three regular-season games. All told, there were three interceptions, including unwise passes and picks in the red zone, a wide-open dropped touchdown throw and other imperfections, such as penalties.
But penalties more severely shoved Colorado in arrears, including ones that put an end to its own drives and preserved important BYU downfield moves.
This game, in fact, could have been labeled the Penalty Bowl, sponsored by, say, Annin Flagmakers, the oldest flag manufacturer in the country. It reached a point of ridiculousness, the refs getting involved again and again, but they called what they saw.
One more pluck of a wing is this: A BYU touchdown early in the third quarter put the Cougars up, 27-0, and … well, let’s not belabor the points.
It was funny, if that’s the right word, the way so much focus in this bowl, particularly by the TV folks, was placed on Colorado this and Colorado that, what with Deion Sanders as the Buffs’ frontman, along with Shedeur and Hunter on lead and rhythm guitars, and with Miss Peggy even featured as groupie No. 1. Another analogy, perhaps a more fitting one — Sitake’s Cougars were the Washington Generals to coach Prime’s Globetrotters.
But with the way BYU dominated so loudly on drums early, as that other band’s music was drowned out, as the Generals scored in flurries, bright spotlights suddenly shined in the opposite direction. When you out-gain your opponent in total yards by 121 and collect 13 more first downs, adding in the special-teams lopsidedness, and defense that clouds over the other team’s stars, fully eclipsing them, well …
Shift happens.
A broader, more comprehensive view of this performance by BYU indicates some important stuff. The showing kind of saved the Cougars’ season. As mentioned, they already had lost two of their final three regular-season games, blowing an opportunity to play for the real Big 12 championship and even qualify for the College Football Playoff. With those failures still stinging, had BYU stumbled and bumbled here, for the mathematically disinclined, it would have made that late record 1-3, truly smudging a 10-win season, a campaign that commenced as a surprise and would’ve ended as a disappointment.
( Jaren Wilkey | BYU) After beating the Colorado Buffaloes in the 2024 Alamo Bowl, BYU football players celebrate by dumping a cooler on head coach Kalani Sitake.
BYU’s players were set on not allowing that to happen.
And so it is that an 11-2 mark, punctuated as boldly and convincingly as it was against a much-ballyhooed — but also respected — opponent, wrapped the Cougars in warmth, in comfort, in satisfaction, and in optimism for what they believe will come next season.
“These guys believe in each other,” Sitake said afterward. “… They love each other.”
And they may learn to love each other more.
If this was both a scream and a shout about what BYU football is and where it now sits in the Big 12 and also a precursor, a tee’d up Titleist for a massive swing of a pure driver next time around, then a declarative statement is proper and appropriate. Watch out for what the Cougars are building.
A surprise can sometimes seem like a fluke, especially when it falters even a little bit. But BYU reminded everyone on Saturday night that it is for real. And it could get … what’s this, realer. Yeah, that’s a real possibility. I watched the game and studied the roster. And it’s a real word, too. I looked it up.
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