NEW ORLEANS — Brian Billick shuffled into LaVell Edwards’ office.
It was 1975, and the coach who would one day have a stadium named after him had just completed his fourth season at the helm of BYU’s program. Shining his shoes behind his desk, Edwards invited Billick to take a seat.
“LaVell said, ‘Boy, I really appreciate all the things you’ve done,’” Billick recalled to the Deseret News this week. “‘It’s been great having you here, and we’re really going to miss you.’”
Billick continued: “I said, ‘Coach, I still have another year of eligibility.’ And he goes, ‘Really? Oh, that’s great!’”
To be fair, he did begin his career at Air Force before transferring to Edwards’ operation, having been recruited by assistant coach and Cougars legend Dick Felt.
Billick, now 70, laughs about the eligibility mix-up nearly a half century ago. He’s grateful to have had that final 1976 season to play in Provo, where he caught passes from Gifford Nielsen and earned All-WAC honors at tight end — BYU’s first-ever all-conference selection at the position.
It was merely the genesis of a life spent in football, where Billick climbed the coaching ranks to ultimately coordinate one of the most prolific offenses in NFL history in Minnesota and hoist the Lombardi Trophy with the Baltimore Ravens.
Now bouncing between interviews on Radio Row at the Super Bowl in New Orleans — where he’s been promoting player safety and his work with X-Tech Shoulder Pads — Billick expressed great pride in his career being one of the many branches of Edwards’ extensive coaching tree.
“Oh my gosh, it’s just such an honor to be (part of Edwards’ legacy),” Billick told the Deseret News. “When I came to BYU, obviously, LaVell was just beginning as a head coach. Having coached for all the years that I have and looking back, the thing I most appreciate out of LaVell was his attitude. It really was just about the players ... Every single day it was, ‘How do I service the players to get the most out of them?’
“Having been through the coaching ranks the way I have, I’ve recognized just how valuable that is, and quite frankly, how unique that is,” Billick continued. “I think really think that was the basis of (Edwards’) success.”
Billick worked under Edwards as a graduate assistant in 1978, making subsequent collegiate stops at San Diego State, Utah State and Stanford.
He broke into the professional ranks with the Vikings in 1992, eventually becoming the team’s offensive coordinator and scheming Minnesota to break the NFL single-season scoring record with 556 points in 1998.
Billick was hired as head coach of the Ravens in 1999, and ironically, despite his background as an offensive player and play-caller, his Baltimore squads emerged as one of the most prolific defenses in league history, allowing a record-low 165 points in 2000.
The Ravens would win the Super Bowl that year, putting Billick alongside Mike Holmgren and Andy Reid as the former Edwards disciples to lead teams to a championship.
“He always has the right priorities,” Billick said of Reid, expressing his desire for the fellow former Cougar to win his fourth Super Bowl this weekend. “... He went to the Green Bay Packers, I went to the Minnesota Vikings. I got the head job in Baltimore, he got it in Philadelphia. So our careers have kind of paralleled, and obviously that drove us close together, plus our shared experiences at BYU. But Andy’s a phenomenal coach and a great extension of what BYU represents.”
While he always kept an eye on the Cougars over the years, Billick — a member of Baltimore’s Ring of Honor after posting an 85-67 record with the franchise — has felt plenty of recent love from his alma mater out west.
He was inducted into the BYU Athletic Hall of Fame this past year and was also honored as part of the program’s 1974 Fiesta Bowl team.
“It was a real honor and totally unexpected” Billick said. “I was thrilled to come back. Obviously I’ve kept up with BYU and followed (the program) as you would, but to come back and go to a couple games, I just love it. Watching (the team’s) growth during the year, what a phenomenon it was.”
Billick was in attendance for the Cougars’ now-iconic 38-9 victory over Kansas State this past September, having been asked by Kalani Sitake to address the team beforehand. Clearly whatever he said ended up working for BYU that night.
“When I spoke to the team, there was an anxiousness about the Kansas State game because they really didn’t know how good they were going to be,” Billick said. “But Kalani told me at that point he liked this team better than any team he’s had before, because of the personality, the brotherhood and the camaraderie with it. It paid off because they played as a team through the entire year.
“... Kalani, very much like LaVell, his strength is that he’s all about the players. ‘What can I do to maximize the players’ (efforts)?’ ... That means a great deal to me.”
Billick admires Sitake and enjoys seeing the program’s trajectory in the Big 12 — but he believes the success of BYU could become even more meaningful far outside of Provo.
“We’re in a time in college athletics, quite frankly, that’s critical. It’s a nexus point. College athletics, particularly college football, is a mess right now. It’s a cesspool. The portal, NIL. We need some type of leadership.
“BYU is a successful program doing it the right way, and it can be that touchstone and that beacon for all of college athletics to say, ‘This is the way we ought to be able to conduct ourselves.’”
