BYU honors its Holy War history

Cougars come back to beat Utah and remain undefeated.

Jake Retzlaff

There are few benefits to conference bloat in college sports. For instance, UCF and Arizona State played each other Saturday for no good reason other than they’re both in the Big 12, in defiance of all geography and shared experience.

But Utah and Brigham Young also played each other Saturday for the same reason. Same thing with Texas and Texas A&M, who will renew their spitting contest later in November because, lo and behold, they’re in the SEC now. Rivalry is the bloodstream of this sport, and the badder the bloodstream, the better. That’s why the events of Saturday night in Salt Lake City were more important than the playoff implications. They call Utah-BYU the Holy War, but games like this are wholly necessary.

This one inspired Utah to play like the Pac-12 champs it used to be, and it brought out the talents of freshman quarterback Brandon Rose, who got his first start in his third year in the program. He threw two touchdown passes, one of them to Brant Kuithe, who seemingly has been at Utah since the days of Zelmo Beaty but actually didn’t show up until 2018, halfway through the first Trump administration.

Other than a kickoff return touchdown by Keelan Marion, BYU was motionless offensively, and the Cougars spent two of their three time outs in the first six-and-a-half minutes of the third quarter. It looked as if BYU would lose its undefeated season in Rice-Eccles Stadium, which would magically become the happiest place on earth under those circumstances.

But when Crew Wakley intercepted Rose to set up a field goal that cut Utah’s lead to 21-13, it seemed portentous, and not just because Wakley, a walk-on who transferred from Utah State, is married to a Utah cheerleader.

The Cougars drove for a touchdown early in the fourth, and it was 21-19. Rose wasn’t converting third down for the Utes anymore. BYU got it back on its own nine with 1:56 left. Twenty-one seconds later, it was fourth and 10 from that same spot, and all the time outs were gone.

Karene Reid and Junior Tafuna promptly collaborated to sack Jake Retzlaff. It’s a wrap, right? No, it’s 2024, and cornerback Zemaiah Vaughn was whistled for holding. First down. That only moved the ball to the 19, but Retzlaff completed two passes and BYU ran its way to the 26, where Will Ferrin’s field goal nailed the 22-21 win. The Cougars, 9-0 overall, remained on top of the Big 12, and Provo’s ice cream shops pushed last call back to 2 a.m. Meanwhile, Utah athletic director Mark Harlan blurted, “This game was absolutely stolen from us.”

Remorse is a constant in the Holy War. In 1993, BYU’s Lenny Gomes Gregory said that Utah fans “will be pumping my gas” one day and were “low-class losers.” Near the end of the 1999 game in Provo, which Utah won, a Ute cheerleader carried a “U” flag down the BYU sideline, and a Cougar fan came out of the seats to tackle him, and the cheerleader than punched out the fan. “Even our cheerleaders are kicking your butt,” yelled Utah receiver Steve Smith.

In 1977, BYU coach LaVell Edwards reinserted quarterback Marc Wilson to set an NCAA yardage record. The Cougars were on their way to a 38-8 win. Utah coach Wayne Howard was incensed enough to promise that “in the next two years, Utah will drill BYU but we won’t run up the score.” The next year, Utah won 23-22. It was only the Utes’ second win over BYU in the midst of a 21-game span.

And in 2007, Cougar receiver Austin Collie celebrated a 17-10 win by saying, “Obviously when you’re doing what’s right on and off the field, I think the Lord steps in and plays a part in it. Magic happens.” Utah fans, many of whom are also Mormon, turned as red as the uniforms.

As BYU quarterback Max Hall said in 2009, “I don’t like Utah. In fact, I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate their program, their fans. I hate everything. I think the whole university and their fans and organization is classless. I don’t respect them and they deserve to lose.”

Now we’re talking.

Hall later said he was referring to the way his family was treated during a game at Rice-Eccles. The temperature will not recede after Saturday night. But anyone who is remotely objective must admit this is an extraordinary comeback story for a BYU program that was cast away as an independent for 11 years. 

BYU bolted the Mountain West right after Utah left to join the Pac-12. It competed in the West Coast Conference in basketball and other sports, but couldn’t find a football partner. The Pac-12 didn’t want BYU, which is one of many decisions that explain why you can now fit the Pac-12 into a Corvette. The BYU program still made money, thanks to an ESPN tie-in that recognized BYU’s nationwide fan appeal, but it had no viable connections with bowl games. The Cougars were 10-3 in 2021 but wound up in the Independence Bowl, in Shreveport. In the Covid season of 2020, nine of their games were canceled before the season started. They patched together a vagabond schedule and went 11-1 but wound up in the Boca Raton Bowl.

Then the Big 12 welcomed them in 2023 with a fat TV contract and an 5-7 record. Coach Kalani Sitake could feel the ice begin to crack beneath him. Few people noticed when he signed Retzlaff, who had played at two Southern California junior colleges. Soon the fans learned that Retzlaff was resourceful and smart. They also learned he was Jewish. Only two other BYU students are. The ways of the Church of Latter-Day Saints weren’t familiar to Retzlaff, but he kept an open mind, and he simmered when he heard opposing fans use anti-Mormon language, because Jews are often treated similarly.

Retzlaff, the subject of McKay Coppins’ profile in The Atlantic, surprised some by playing a game on Yom Kippur. On social media he began calling himself the “BYJew,” which eventually landed on T-shirts. His intention was to help Utahns learn more about his faith, as he has learned about theirs.

Winning has fostered that empathy. In Game 2, BYU won at SMU, 18-15, and held the Mustangs without a touchdown. That was a low-profile game at the time, but it’s still the only loss SMU has.

More began to notice when BYU throttled Kansas State, 38-9, and forced three turnovers in a 2:19 span. The Cougars also came back to beat Oklahoma  State, 38-35, when Retzlaff hit Darius Lassiter with a 35-yard touchdown as 0:10 showed on the clock.

Will BYU make the 12-team playoff? If it wins the Big 12 championship game, which might be against Colorado, that’s guaranteed. But it has a tough trip to Arizona State, sandwiched by home games with Kansas and Houston. Putting the Holy War in the mental scrapbook will be a major challenge. Nothing on earth, or elsewhere, will keep it out of the conversation.

In other developments:

Georgia Tech 28, Miami 23: The Hurricanes lost their first game in 10 because Cam Ward, for once, couldn’t sweep up all the defensive debris. He was 25 for 39 for 348 yards and three touchdowns, and he had the ball on his own 19 with 1:52 left. But he coughed up the ball while being sacked and Jordan van den Berg recovered for Georgia Tech (6-4). The Yellow Jackets controlled the ball for nearly 34 minutes, and quarterback Haynes King hit all six of his passes and ran 20 times for 93 yards. Their 75-yard TD drive in the first quarter consumed 10:45. In a 4-team playoff matrix,  Miami might not recover from this loss, but they won’t fall out of the 12-team rankings and can get in, regardless, with an ACC championship.

Mississippi 28, Georgia 10: The turning point here might have been in the first quarter, when Dan Jackson intercepted Jaxson Dart’s pass and Georgia scored on a 21-yard drive. Dart then left the game with an ankle problem. But the home crowd was heartened when freshman Austin Simmons quarterbacked the Rebels on a 75-yard TD drive. Dart returned and the rout was on, with five field goals and a scoring pass to Antwane Wells Jr.  The Bulldogs suffered three turnovers for the third consecutive week and finally paid for them, and Ole Miss sacked Carson Beck five times and threw Georgia backwards on nine plays. “We stopped the run and then we had some fun,” said pass rusher Jared Ivey. Ole Miss is 8-2 and Georgia 7-2, but both teams figure to make the playoff if they win out. Georgia has to deal with once-beaten Tennessee this week, in Athens.

Missouri 30, Oklahoma 23: With two minutes left the Sooners’ Billy Bowman returned a fumble 43 yards and they led 23-16. After a fiery SEC baptism, something good was about to happen. Instead, OU fell to 5-5 after an inexplicable collapse.. The Tigers tied it on a 10-yard TD pass from Drew Pyne to former Sooner Theo Wease Jr. Then, three plays into the Sooners’ drive, Triston Newson sacked Jackson Arnold, who lost Oklahoma’s fourth fumble of the day. Zion Young scooped and scored on the 17-yard play with 0:22 left. Missouri is 7-2 and 18-4 over the past two seasons.

Indiana 20, Michigan 15: There was another litmus test in Bloomington on Saturday and it turned up red, which, in this ballpark, is good. The Hoosiers are 10-0 after they took a 17-3 lead and hung on. A poor punt gave Michigan (5-5) possession on the Hoosiers’ 34 and Kalil Mullings scored seven plays later, but quarterback Davis Warren threw incomplete on the two-point conversion, and Indiana added a field goal. In a tribute to how far and how fast the Hoosiers have come for new coach Curt Cignetti, the big home crowd did not storm the field after the win over the defending national champs. Michigan and Washington played for that 2023 title but, this year, are a combined 10-10.

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