Brian Billick, who led the Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl championship as a head coach in 2000, arrived at BYU in the 1970s and wasn't a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He didn't know what he was getting into.
"I knew that it was a Mormon school," he recalls. "I'll tell you an embarrassing story. I got up there in January. I'm new and lost, and I don't know what's going on. I came out of the Air Force Academy, so I had short hair. They automatically think, 'This guy's going to fit right in.' I'm sizing it all up, and I'm at the Smith Fieldhouse, and I see all these guys running around with 'LDS' on their shirts, which I had come to learn is Latter-day Saints. Well, I'm thinking, 'This must be a co-theological university. There's the Mormons and the LDS.' I go on like this for a couple of weeks, not piecing it together.
"I get to the dining hall and there was a young lady. Being a red-blooded American young male, I sat down and struck up a conversation, trying to make small talk. I ask her, 'Are you Mormon or are you LDS?' She looks at me and says, 'You're a football player, aren't you?' I learned very quickly that they were the same. But it was an easy transition because of the people. I really enjoyed my time there, once I learned the similarities between the Mormons and the LDS."
While Billick is not LDS, because of his ties to BYU, there are people who think he is.
"There are a lot of assumptions that way, which is fine with me," he says. "I'm very proud of my time at BYU. The fact I'm not a member of the church doesn't mitigate the fact that I have a huge respect for the church and its people. My closest advisors now, friends and financially, are all members of the church. I've made some great friendships there."
Jeff Call is a Deseret News sports writer.
e-mail: jeffc@desnews.com