Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
When legendary BYU football coach LaVell Edwards was beginning to build a college football powerhouse in Provo in the 1970s, the biggest hurdle to conference success wasn’t longtime rival Utah, or Wyoming, which had dominated BYU in the late 1960s.
It was Arizona, and Arizona State, schools that had joined with BYU, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming to form the six-member Western Athletic Conference in 1962. Either the Wildcats or the Sun Devils won WAC championships from 1969 to 1973, as Edwards struggled to gain traction with what at the time was one of the least successful football programs in the country.
In 1974, however, Edwards and the Cougars got a breakthrough win over one of the conference’s kingpins, walloping Arizona 37-13 in Tucson behind the passing of quarterback Gary Sheide and rushing of running back Jeff Blanc to snap U of A’s four-game winning streak in the series.
The victory gave BYU its first WAC championship, and something of a rivalry was born. Conference doormat BYU was suddenly a threat to the Arizona schools, and the mere thought of that didn’t go over well in Tempe and Tucson.
Arizona got revenge in 1975 with a 36-20 victory, despite Gifford Nielsen’s 387 passing yards. Three turnovers doomed the Cougars that day. Nielsen’s 43-yard touchdown pass to George Harris with three seconds remaining lifted BYU over Arizona, 23-16, in 1976.
Arizona and Arizona State left the WAC in 1978 to join what was the Pac-8, but as a nice little sendoff BYU throttled Arizona 34-14 in 1977 in the then-rivals’ last meeting as WAC members. Marc Wilson threw for 334 yards and two touchdowns — to Harris and Mike Chronister — in the romp in Provo.
BYU fell 24-13 to No. 17 Arizona State two weeks later in Tempe and the Cougars and Sun Devils tied for the conference title with…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/reunited-again-big-12-foes-213000296.html
Author : Deseret News
Publish date : 2024-10-08 21:30:00
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