-- Comedy = tragedy + time? Not true, in the case of these brutal losses
A couple of weeks back I wrote about my favorite BYU wins. I now address the horror movie version of that blog, featuring the most painful losses. Keep in mind I only considered games I've been a fan for, aka from 1995 and on.
#15 -- BYU at USC 2003
Ah, expectations. The higher they are, the greater the potential suffering. So by this logic how could losing a road game against #5 USC with a BYU team that was 5-7 the year prior be so painful, given how little was expected of the Cougars in this game?
Because they came pretty close to winning. Oft-mocked Rod Wilkerson was one toe short of scoring a touchdown to close the gap to one point in the third quarter. BYU had the ball in USC territory with a chance to take a lead with seven minutes left in the fourth. BYU was down only three with four minutes left when USC faced a second-and-17. And then USC converted the long down, scored, caused a turnover and scored again. Game over.
I was so distraught after this game. What if BYU hadn't missed that one field goal earlier in the game? What if that pick-six never happened? We had a chance to upset a team on the cusp of a dynasty. USC would ultimately go 37 and 2 from 2003 to 2005, with one national title win and one national title loss. And BYU could've beat them.
I was 17-years old and this was by far the most woulda-coulda-shoulda game of my fan career up to that point.11. In retrospect I realize BYU probably wasn't that close. What I mean is if I saw this exact same game today, I'd assume USC coasted after jumping to an immediate 21-0 first quarter lead. Then once BYU crept back into it, USC stopped messing around and won the game going away. But as a 17-year-old all I could see was the missed opportunities and what could have been.
#14 -- BYU vs TCU 2011
I really wanted to win this game to make up for the three straight losses to TCU, to celebrate another win in the Cowboys stadium, to help ease a bit of the 54-10 rivalry pain of the prior month, and to lend some respect to a season that would ultimately end up with 10 wins ... but only one of which was against a noteworthy foe (Ole Miss).
Forget winning, we ended up looking like complete jokes. TCU scored on the second play of the game after isolating one of their fastest receivers on our middle linebacker because I don't know why. BYU's next feat was to snap the ball into the ground on a punt which gave TCU the ball at BYU's 8-yard line. Next thing you know TCU had 14 points on only 4 plays. Things couldn't get worse could they?
It got worse. BYU would botch another punt snap, have another punt blocked, and punt another ball that made it all of 23 yards down field. In total BYU would get credited with two successful punts on 5 attempts (!!!) for 58 total yards.
And that may not have been the most embarrassing special teams moment of the night. Behold, the Charlie Brown field goal, played to the soothing tones of the announcers mocking our coaching decisions.
BYU set the standard for incompetence during the loss to Utah earlier that year, but this was something special in its own horrifying way.
#13 -- BYU at Utah 2010
There are a few competing theories for why BYU was cursed to suffer nine consecutive rivalry defeats during the 2010s. I stand by my Max Hall is underappreciated theory, but second in the running is the fact that on the day of the 2010 rivalry game -- that most hallowed day, and the last time for the foreseeable future in which it would be the final game of the year -- I went to my dearest Cougar friends' house and his wife served TOFU DOGS.
I should have known then that the level of barbeque disrespect she displayed could only bring bad karma on the team I loved. Sure enough BYU lost the game but they didn't just lose the game; they lost due to a fumble after the play was dead, an onside punt,22. What is an onside punt? A punt that is botched so horrendously that it travels only 10 yards but somehow manages to bounce right into an opposing player who is trying to dodge the ball, resulting in a live ball which the punting team recovers. According to my research, Utah remains the only team in the NCAA to have successfully executed the play.
and a coach who thought "Hey I know we could try and get closer but how about we just settle for a 50-yard field goal because those go in most of the time."
It's insane to think we would go on to lose in even more unbelievable ways in the following years.
#12 -- BYU at Boise State 2012
BYU's defense held the opposing team to zero points and we lost the game. What more needs to be said?
#11 -- BYU at Utah State 2010
Utah State defeated BYU for the first time in 17 years which is painful enough but consider these three shakes of salt in the wound: 1) it capped our first four-game losing streak in over a decade; 2) we lost Cougar favorite Jordan Pendleton to injury; and 3) a mentally handicapped associate of mine -- who knew I was a currently enrolled USU student -- saw me at the game in BYU gear and yelled "TRAITOR!!" at the top of his lungs with true authenticity.
You think it's uncomfortable being a fan in a visiting arena? Try it when a loud adult with a disadvantaged brain thinks you've stabbed him in the back -- and wants everyone to know it.
#10 -- BYU at Boise State 2004
One of the things I hate most about losing games is that amazing plays from losses tend to be forgotten. For example, will Francis Bernard's incredible interception against Utah in 2016 or Fred Warner's pick-six against Boise in 2016 slip out of our collective fan memory as those painful losses fade? Maybe, but on the other hand the enormous hits by Matt Payne in the '04 edition of the Boise game live on.
Sadly, so too have the scars of his missed field goal. I mistakenly wanted Gary Crowton to remain as head coach so I desperately wanted a marquee win over an undefeated, top-25 Boise.
Instead of victory I got a nut-punch on the final play.
#9 -- BYU vs Utah 2011
I wanted so bad for BYU to send a message in this game. To Utah, to the Pac-12, to the nation that BYU deserved power conference promotion. This was BYU's first chance to show they were the superior athletic program.
The message we sent was this: we like fumbling and sucking at football.
BYU fumbled six times. Utah scored 47 points in a row. Jake Heaps' career was murdered live on ESPN. I wailed.
#8 -- BYU vs Utah 2015, aka the Vegas Bowl
Were Bronco and his staff shopping for homes during this game? Or recruiting future Cavaliers? They couldn't have been coaching because coaches don't fall behind by 35 points to their most hated enemy in an 11-minute span. Not in their final game.
Irrational thoughts kept me up all night in the aftermath. I wrote a Cougarboard post at 3:23 AM wondering if Bronco really cared about football. It was anger-fueled, but I think there is some accuracy in it. Consider it in comparison to this section of an ESPN article published two weeks ago:
Honestly it's impressive that Bronco has been so successful considering how little he enjoys many football's elements.
#7 -- BYU at Utah 2016
I know, I know ... so much talk about Utah. But rivalries are what's fun about college football. 95% of college teams have no chance to play for the national championship, which means 95% of teams are playing solely for something they have decided matters to them (bowl wins, conference titles, national rankings, victories over your neighbor school). Beating your rival is the most fun of these bragging rights. Coming close and losing them in the final moment is when it hurts the most.
Losing to Utah in 2016 didn't just hurt because it carried on the streak. It hurt because we were only two games into Ty Detmer's coaching career and we knew he sucked. How? His first call of the game was to throw a pass to a true freshman wide receiver. The pass bounced off the receiver's arms and into Utah's for a touchdown. Whose idea was it to throw to an 18-year old who is playing the second game of his career in front of a stadium-shaking rivalry crowd? Especially when the team had upperclassmen receivers in Trinnaman, Kurtz, Pearson, and Laulu-Pututau?
But you think that call was the worst of it? Imagine you're Taysom Hill. Your first pass of the game is an interception. You might think, "Hmm, we played Utah just two games ago in the Vegas Bowl and had two pick-sixes and another that was three feet short of being a pick-six." You might think, "Lately when we play these guys the ball seems to always bounce their way." Perhaps this makes you feel a bit uneasy. Maybe you feel a little bit of pressure rising in your chest as the crowd goes nuts. So what does Ty Detmer do to help his QB navigate this potential rattling? He calls passes on 15 of BYU's next 18 plays.
Do you know who was in the backfield for this game? Taysom Hill and Jamaal Williams -- two of the most prolific rushers in the history of the BYU program. But Detmer refused to run. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. Instead of trying to calm things down he continued to ask his QB to throw directly into the belly of the beast.
And it ends with one of the least creative two-point tries in BYU history. My Utah friend who was at the game told me BYU's receivers didn't even pop in their mouthguard on the play; it was that obvious the ball was staying on the ground. I don't know if that's true because I've never gone back and watched this infuriating game. And I never will.
#6 -- BYU at Notre Dame 2012
I used double my allotted words per section in the last section ranting about Utah, so I'll be brief here. Opportunities to upset top-5 teams on national TV don't come along often. BYU crapped all over this one. Not only is there the legendary Nelson-Hoffman miss, but BYU also turned the ball over on an interception in Notre Dame territory that hit Kaneakua Friel right in the hands. They also allowed Notre Dame a 60-yard run on a play where the runner was absolutely stuffed yet miraculously weaseled out of the pile. If that runner's knee goes an inch lower you can take three points off the board for Notre Dame -- in a game we lost 17 to 14.
If BYU versus USC in 2003 was the 'if only' game of my teens, this was the one of my 20s.
#5 -- BYU vs Utah State 2014
When BYU and Utah State faced off on that dark October night Utah State had only 9 offensive touchdowns for the entire season. For comparison Taysom Hill alone had scored ten of his own. Things were so bad that Utah State had lost to Arkansas State by only scoring 14 points ... in five quarters of play.
That night they were using their third quarterback of the year. They played a linebacker at running back.
And they absolutely smoked us.
Think of it this way. BYU gave up more offensive touchdowns to USU in one half ... than Idaho State did versus USU in an entire game three weeks prior.
So to recap: we got trampled at home, by backups, while undefeated, against a team who hadn't won in Provo since 1978, on the same day we celebrated Jim McMahon.
Oh and our starting QB who just happened to be playing God-level football was knocked out for the season, just as he had been by the same team two years prior. I'm shocked this isn't higher on my list.
#4 -- BYU at TCU 2008
I'd love to go back and revisit my level of cockiness on October 16, 2008. Consider: we had won our last three Pac-10 games, one of which was a 59-to-zero obliteration. We had outscored our opponents 137-to-zero over an 11-quarter span (UCLA, Wyoming, USU). We had won 18 MWC conference games in a row. We had won back-to-back conference championships. We had beat Utah twice in a row. We were ranked #9 in the country. We'd won back-to-back bowl games over Pac-10 foes. We were playing so well that Utah State fans nearly rushed the field when they scored on us.
Max Hall through that point in the season was completing 71% of his passes, for an average of 308 yards per game, with 21 touchdowns against four picks. He'd only been sacked twice in 6 six games. Austin Collie was tracking as the nation's best receiver, while Dennis Pitta was contending for the same title among tight ends. It was against this backdrop that perhaps I wasn't totally insane when I told my friend Brian Henderson that this BYU-TCU game might be close. "I don't think we'll win this one by 20 or 30. This could be a two-score game I'm afraid."
So this wasn't just a loss -- it was a mystique-breaking loss. It was a whiplash loss. I was as blindsided by this result as Max Hall was by Jerry Hughes.33. I wasn't the only one. Even Gary Patterson was surprised: "Nobody has been able to do that to BYU for a couple of years. No way I could have seen it coming." In the course of an hour we Cinderella'd our way from a national title team into a pumpkin. Only one other time have I felt a BYU team go from so high to so low so quickly. And surprise, you're about three paragraphs away from finding it.
#3 -- BYU at Utah 2012
What was the most unforgiveable part of this game?
a) BYU had 7 false starts
c) One year after the bad-snap debacle against TCU, BYU on the very first play snapped the ball into the ground for a safety (wiped out by penalty)
d) BYU would later have another bad snap which would go for a Ute touchdown
e) One year after the fumbling debacle against Utah, BYU would fumble FIVE more times in this game
f) On the final play BYU attempted a pressure-packed, 51-yard field goal, with a kicker who was so unlucky he once got bit by a spider which led to him falling off a porch and breaking his ankle.
g) On the final play BYU attempted a pressure-packed, 51-yard field goal, with a kicker who by his own admission was 4,800 kicks shy of being ready for the season
h) On the final play BYU attempted a pressure-packed, 51-yard field goal, with a kicker who had already missed from closer range earlier in the game
i) Michael Alisa got more carries than Jamaal Williams.
j) JD Falslev got more carries than Taysom Hill
k) That despite all this, Riley Nelson was one good block away from throwing a 34-yard game-winning TD to Hoffman as time expired
The answer is all of it. This game was so stupid and officially became the moment I stopped believing in Bronco. I just couldn't understand how a year after being humiliated by Utah and TCU due to an amazing number of boneheaded miscues, we came right back out with the exact same mistakes. It's incomprehensible. How did nothing change? How do you fumble six times against your rival in one year and then do it again five times the next?44. Yes, the box score will tell you BYU only fumbled once, but that only counts lost fumbles. In reality Hoffman fumbled after a catch, Nelson fumbled right after a snap, Nelson fumbled on a sack, Nelson fumbled on an option run, and Alisa fumbled the attempted recovery of the botched snap that ended in a Utah touchdown. By fortune all but the Alisa fumble were recovered by BYU. There was even another near fumble by Nelson on a passing play that got reviewed and ultimately deemed a forward pass.
The only thing I would have expected from the team is to protect the ball. They didn't. The second thing I would have expected is for the offensive line to beware of the conditions they would play in. They weren't. I can handle losing to Utah, but I can't handle losing to them like that. This game may only be the third most painful on my list, but it's #1 in terms of the rage it generates.
#2 -- BYU vs FSU 2009
At halftime Max Hall had completed 81% of his passes for 176 yards, 1 touchdown, and zero interceptions. BYU had converted every third down they faced. BYU had averaged 76 yards per drive and hadn't punted once.
They also trailed by 16.
BYU didn't force Florida State's first punt until the Seminole's had reached the 44-point mark. FSU had scoring drives lasting 11, 17, 12, and 10 plays. One of them clocked in at over 8 minutes of game time. BYU couldn't stop a single thing. I swear Florida State ran the same play-action, rollout, dump off to their tight end 55 times. Each one was a punch in the heart. We were ranked seventh in the country and I thought we were legit.
To go from beating Oklahoma with a suffocating defensive effort to getting railroaded by a team who snuck by Jacksonville State with 19 points was beyond my brain's ability to compute. It was like getting hired and fired the same day.
This one still hurts because FSU wasn't that good. They scored 54 points against us but in their other three games to start the season they scored a combined 60 (and two of those opponents were Jacksonville State and South Florida). If we win that game -- and I contest we'd win that same game at least 6 out of 10 times -- we finish the season ranked in the 7 to 10 range which would make 2009 the 4th best season in BYU history by AP ranking (trailing 1984, 1996, and 1983).
2009 was still an awesome season. We defeated three ranked teams, beat the reigning Heisman winner, and toppled our rival for the 3rd time in 4 years. But it could've been even better.
#1 -- BYU at Utah 2008
Remember the opening scene from Breaking Bad where Walt's hearing goes in and out of focus while his doctor breaks the cancer news? That was me in the 4th quarter of this game.
Denial. Heartbreak. Anger. Despair. Confusion. Disbelief. Every emotion passed through me that night. I walked around campus deep into the night. I couldn't respond to texts. I couldn't see straight.
Just how much was riding on this game? Win and BYU would not only steal an outright MWC title from Utah, but also claim the crown (or a part thereof) for three years in a row; win and BYU would vault into pole position for BCS consideration; win and BYU would have a chance at ending the season in the top-10 for only the fourth time in history; win and BYU would crush Utah's dreams of a perfect season and BCS glory. It was the rivalry game with the biggest combined stakes of all-time.
There was so much potential joy waiting for us that night. Austin Collie, amid chants of "Collie sucks!" from the crowd, returned the game-opening kickoff 70 yards. Harvey Unga was gashing the Utes. We had the ball in the third quarter with the chance to take the lead. Max Hall hit Michael Reed. He hit Austin Collie. He hit Austin Collie again. A drive was materializing.
Then the entire team entered the upside down.
Vecna had us in his grips and instead of being saved by Rise and Shout we were tortured to the ghastly tune of Utah Man. Having my actual bones broken and my eyes gouged out would have been a better outcome than what transpired in that fourth quarter.
Not only were my hopes and dreams killed that night, my rival's materialized in front of my face. No moment has ever been worse for me as a fan.
You forgot the Miami Beach Brawl Bowl.
ReplyDelete-Paul Ackerson