BYUCougars.com - BYU Football Tradition

BYU Football Tradition

For BYU football, the past 33 years have been packed full of championships, bowl games and national honors. Since 1974 BYU has played in 26 bowl games, won a National Championship, claimed 22 Conference Championships and earned 16 national top-25 finishes, including four top-10 finishes. In 2008, BYU will enter the season with the nation's longest active winning streak at 10 straight games, including a victory over UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl. Over the past two seasons, BYU has posted a record of 22-4 and has won 22 of the last 25 games it has played. The Cougars have been to three straight bowl games and is currently on a two-game win streak in the post-season. (Both victories came against teams from the Pac-10.) Since the 1970s, BYU has established itself as one of the top football programs in the West. The Cougars have won nearly 80 percent of their conference games and 70 percent of all their games since 1972. Did you know ... BYU won the National Championship in 1984. BYU has participated in 26 bowl games, including three in the past three years. BYU has won a total of 23 Conference Championships, including a record four Mountain West Conference titles. BYU has a total of 16 top-25 finishes since 1974, including 10 different top-15 finishes and four different top-10 finishes. BYU currently has the longest active winning streak in the country at 10 straight games. BYU has won 22 of the 25 games it has played. Current BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall has posted a record of 28-10 (.737) over the past three seasons, including mark of 22-4 over the past two years. Read More About Past All-Americans

Tradition of Winners

BYU is home to 63 All-America honorees, four College Football Hall of Fame members, a College Football Hall of Fame coach, the 1990 Heisman Trophy winner, the 2001 Doak Walker Award winner, four Davey O'Brien Award winners, two Outland Trophy winners, seven Sammy Baugh Trophy winners and a two-time National Coach of the Year winner. Off the field, the Cougars have also excelled. BYU has 13 NCAA Post-Graduate Scholars and has had 25 Academic All-Americans who have earned a total of 29 Academic All-America citations. Truly, BYU is a place for winners

Did you know ...

BYU's Steve Young, Jim McMahon, Marc Wilson and Gifford Nielsen are all members of the College Football Hall of Fame.
BYU's LaVell Edwards is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
BYU's Ty Detmer won the 1990 Heisman Trophy
BYU's Luke Staley won the 2001 Doak Walker Award
BYU's Mohammed Elewonibi won the 1989 Outland Trophy
BYU's Jason Buck won the 1986 Outland Trophy
BYU's Jim McMahon (1981), Steve Young (1983) and Ty Detemer (1990, 1991) each won the Davey O'Brien Award
BYU's Gary Sheide (1974), March Wilson (1979), Jim McMahon (1981), Steve Young (1983), Robbie Bosco (1984), Ty Detmer (1991) and Steve Sarkisian (1996) have each won the Sammy Baugh Trophy.
Former BYU head coach LaVell Edwards ranks as the sixth all-time winningest football coach, posting a record of 257-101-3 over 29 seasons.
BYU has had a top-10 finisher in the Heisman Trophy voting 12 different times.
BYU has had 12 consensus All-Americans.

Two Time MWC Champions
The Cougars have won the Mountain West Conference Championship the last two years in a row.

12 Game Home Winning Streak
BYU has not lost a home game in two consecutive seasons. One of the goals in the "Quest for Perfection" is to keep this streak alive. The video link below is a highlight of those twelve games.

LaVell Edwards

Edwards was BYU's head football coach from 1972 to 2000. His offensive scheme was passing-dominated. He started coaching in an era when college football offenses were dominated by strong running attacks. His quarterbacks threw over 11,000 passes for more than 100,000 yards and 635 touchdowns. He got the idea to switch to a pass oriented team by looking at BYU's past history. The BYU football program had been a dismal failure before Lavell with the notable exception of one conference championship that resulted from the aerial attack of Virgil Carter. This past success encouraged Lavell to open up the BYU offense.