With the first meeting of Utah and BYU in a bowl game just a week away in Las Vegas, it is interesting to reflect on the unusual firsts and the pendulum swings that have marked this special rivalry.
The 2015 BYU Football Almanac identifies 1922 as the year of the first BYU versus Utah matchup. The game ended with a 49-0 Utah victory, which was a portent of things to come. BYU did not defeat Utah in the first 20 years of competition.
My brother was a sophomore at BYU in 1942 and witnessed the first triumph by the Cougars over the Utes. He also got a piece of the wooden goal post after the game as a remembrance of that signal event.
As an illustration of how one-sided the rivalry pendulum had swung, the 1953 BYU squad carried coach Chick Atkinson off the field after a one-point loss to Utah. I watched that nationally televised game on Thanksgiving Day from my home in Fresno, California, on our first black and white television set that my dad had recently purchased.
When I arrived as a freshman at BYU in 1958, the Cougars had defeated the Utes only that one time in history. During freshmen orientation that fall in Provo, we had a big bonfire rally and traveled the next evening in a caravan of cars to Salt Lake City.
I got a piece of the goal post after a Wayne Startin to R.K. Brown pass late in the game got the Cougars a victory over All-American QB Lee Grosscup and the Utes.
The pendulum swung back to Utah again and the Utes built a team that won the Liberty Bowl in 1964. In 1965, I was standing in my Cosmo outfit alongside the Cougar team and redshirt RB Perry Rodriquez when the gun sounded, signaling the end of a close victory by the Cougars over the Utes.
That third victory in history by BYU over Utah was led by record-setting QB Virgil Carter and his outstanding receiver Phil Odle. The season culminated in the first-ever conference championship by the Cougars. That team and the late coach Hudspeth were recently honored at LaVell Edwards Stadium on the 50th anniversary of that historic event.
It took 44 years for the Cougars to win their first conference championship, but Utah in that same period had 18 conference championships. Once LaVell Edwards took the helm at BYU, the pendulum swung dramatically.
In 1974, Edwards and QB Gary Scheide took the Cougars to their first bowl game, the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona. BYU rocketed to national prominence over the next few years, and in Edwards' Western Athletic Conference tenure, the Cougars won outright or shared 19 conference championships.
Meanwhile, the Utes fought to gain some momentum to swing the pendulum back in their direction. With some groundwork laid by coach Ron McBride, coach Urban Meyer and QB Alex Smith got Utah its first outright conference championship in 2003, a dearth that had lasted for over 50 years.
The Utes followed up that success with Bowl Championship Series wins in 2004 and 2008, and a No. 2 national ranking in 2008 under coach Kyle Whittingham.
Although the pendulum has swung in the Utes' direction over the past few years, it is interesting to note that in the short tenure that BYU and Utah both competed in the Mountain West Conference, their cumulative conference records were virtually identical and each team had four shared or outright conference titles.
So what sticks in the craw of BYU fans? It is the recent 4-0 streak of Utah wins over the Cougars and the 6-3 advantage that coach Whittingham has over coach Bronco Mendenhall, let alone the Utah Power 5 conference affiliation. Cougar fans do not want that pendulum to continue to swing in the Utah direction.
So, what better time to change the direction than Saturday? A win by the Cougars would give their coach his 100th win as well as some momentum going into next season's early BYU-Utah matchup. It won't be long before we see which way the pendulum and momentum swing. One thing for sure … Las Vegas will be rocking with rivalry fever.
Ken Driggs of Mesa, Arizona, is a BYU graduate and served as Cosmo in the ’60s. Contact him at kkdriggs@gmail.com.