Anyone who follows college sports has seen and heard BYU’s name mentioned a lot of late. A whole lot. For reasons that run counter to the very limitations formerly placed on the Cougars when chances for their national success were discussed. Typically, their chances for national success were not discussed, and that’s the main point here.
They are now.
Those who once ignored BYU or scoffed at its relevance in football and men’s basketball — and there were many who did so, present company included — are paying attention now. It’s not that long ago that no power conference took BYU seriously. Even worse, no major conference, for one reason or 10 others, wanted the Cougars in its league.
BYU begged to get in, somewhere, anywhere. It was the kid on the playground jumping up and down, waving his arms around, trying to get selected to play, trying to be seen. Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me, pick me.
Instead … well, you know the story. The Cougars went independent in football and threw in with the West Coast Conference in basketball, playing their road games against schools whose entire enrollment would have easily fit inside the Marriott Center, and in front of crowds that would have fit around your grandma’s dining room table.
All of it seemed a lousy fit. And every Cougar knew it.
On a national scale, BYU was seen as a nice — but kind of weird — not-so-little religious school out west in the Rockies somewhere, an outpost wedged between the Wasatch and a salty desert that had had its moments under LaVell Edwards in football and that seemed to draw a good number of fans and that liked to hold fast to its beliefs, stuff like refusing to play games on Sunday. The good folks out there rode around in horse-drawn buggies, delivering jugs of milk to neighbors and raising barns and such, right? The campus was filled with students who looked like Donny and Marie, with the occasional exception of a rebel quarterback who eschewed drinking caffeine-free soda, favoring instead a bedside bottle of Jack Daniels.
Those Cougars had their moments — their mascot was pretty good, their dance team great — but not that many of them.
