The previous time Arizona played BYU in a conference game Brent Brennan was 4 years old, on Oct. 28, 1977, when the schools were rivals in the Western Athletic Conference.
The No. 15 Cougars won 34-14 at Provo, Utah, strengthening their lead in the WAC with a 4-0 record while being 6-1 overall under legendary coach LaVell Edwards.
Arizona, 2-5 and 1-2 in Tony Mason’s first season as head coach, left the WAC along with Arizona State the following season to join the former Pac-8.
With BYU and Arizona now in the Big 12, the 14th-ranked Cougars (5-0, 2-0) hope to remain unbeaten in the conference when they host the Wildcats (3-2, 1-1) at 1 p.m., Tucson time.
The series is tied at 12-12-1. The Wildcats held a 9-7 edge over the Cougars in their WAC days from 1962 to 1977.
“We’ve had some great battles with Arizona,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said Monday during his weekly press conference. “We’re glad that they are in the conference now. They do an amazing job. I have a lot of respect for them and their fanbase. We hope they can be treated well by us and our fans.”
In the 1977 game, the BYU fans and the Cougars did not treat Arizona warmly in the Wildcats’ last game at Provo for the foreseeable future because of their move to the Pac-10 the following season.
The other WAC presidents actually tried futilely to block the move by Arizona and Arizona State and attempted to make it mandatory for the Wildcats and Sun Devils to stick to the remaining five years they were contracted to play football in the conference.
BYU-Arizona lineups in 1977 game
“Maybe Arizona was right in leading the move to the high-rent district,” Salt Lake City Tribune sports editor John Mooney wrote the week the Wildcats were to play in Provo. “But I’ll wager it will be years before the Wildcats can figure on finishing in the upper division of the Pac-8 like they did nine times in the WAC.”
Mooney would have lost that wager, badly.
It took Arizona only two years to finish in the upper division of the Pac-10, in third place in the 1979 season when Tony Mason coached the Wildcats to 6-5-1 overall record and 4-3 in the Pac-10. The year was capped with a 16-10 loss to No. 10 Pittsbugh and Dan Marino in the Fiesta Bowl.
Larry Smith replaced Mason in 1980 after impending NCAA infractions under Mason forced Mason’s exit, and Smith made Arizona feel like it belonged in the Pac-10. In his last five seasons with Arizona from 1982 to 1986 before he left to USC, Smith coached Arizona to these finishes in the Pac-10 — fifth in 1982 and 1983, tied for third in 1984, tied for second in 1985 and tied for fourth in 1986.
Mooney must have felt good about his prediction of Arizona’s second-division finishes for a while in the Pac-10 after the Wildcats’ 34-14 drubbing by BYU in that 1977 game at Provo.
Mason told reporters that high winds and BYU’s pass-oriented offense were too much for the Wildcats to handle.
Marc Wilson replaced injured Gifford Nielson at quarterback fo BYU, and Wilson engineered the Cougars to 554 yards of total offense — 334 of them passing from Wilson, a sophomore who completed 23 of 43 attempts with two touchdowns.
“We just came out and smoked them,” Wilson told reporters afterward.
BYU led 17-0 in the first quarter and built that margin to 27-0 by halftime.
Arizona sophomore Jim Krohn, an Amphi grad, had two of the Wildcats’ three interceptions. The Wildcats also lost three fumbles.
After BYU built its lead to 17-0, the wind started to swirl at a high rate and rain began to fall hard with the temperature in the low 50s.
“We needed a big play and we get the win and rain in our face,” Mason said. “About then, we needed some help from the gods. I know it probably sounds like sour grapes, but we needed something … everything was rattling. However, the wind didn’t beat us, BYU did.”
The Cougars amassed 218 rushing yards in the first half.
Reporters grilled Mason about playing Krohn at quarterback rather than senior Marc Lunsford. Krohn completed 7 of 21 passes for 121 yards before yielding to Lunsford in the fourth quarter when BYU led 34-7.
“We play anyone who meets our fancy,” Mason said.
Lunsford entered for a series before hurting his thigh and Krohn returned.
Jim McMahon, a freshman that season, played briefly in the fourth quarter in place of Wilson and completed a 6-yard pass as one of this three attempts.
“I do remember that brutal game well, as we seemed to experience all four seasons in one short afternoon — sunshine, rain, cold, and even snow,” former Arizona defensive lineman Bill Nettling mentioned. “Thing I remember the most though was eating lunch at the BYU Student Union the day before the game as a young freshman from Ohio and wondering why there were so many high chairs lined up along the wall.
“Some of the upperclassmen looked at me with puzzled faces and said, ‘Don’t you know where we are? The majority of the students here are married! And many have children.’ Wow! I just couldn’t fathom that. Then the next day, realizing these guys were grown men, many 24-25 years old having been on a mission for two years — I had a lot to learn!”
As downtrodden as Arizona was after that one, the Wildcats were overjoyed when they finally faced the Cougars again almost 30 years later in 2006 at Arizona Stadium. Nick Folk made a last-second 48-yard field goal for the 16-13 victory.
The Wildcats lost 20-7 at BYU the following season. They then defeated the Cougars 31-21 in the 2008 Las Vegas Bowl.
Arizona has not won in Provo since 1975, a 36-20 triumph that culminated a three-game winning streak at BYU for the Wildcats.
Sitake played at BYU in 1994, went on a two-year mission, and then completed his career with the Cougars from 1997 to 2000 as a fullback under Edwards. He never had the opportunity to play against Arizona because the two former WAC rivals did not play each other for 27 years, from 1978 to 2005.
BYU and Arizona have played each other six times since 2006, including Sitake’s first game as a head coach in 2016, when the Cougars prevailed 18-16 in the season opener at the Arizona Cardinals’ stadium in Glendale.
“It was a competitive game,” Sitake recalled. “That seems so long ago now. I think I was way better looking back then.”
The rivarly has a new look with the teams in the Big 12. Arizona is hoping it’s a better-looking matchup than that windy, rainy and miserable day at Provo in 1977.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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