BYU Football Must Recapture Its Brand

BYU has lost some of its national brand

Beginning next season BYU football will once again be seen in homes across America on a regular basis.

For five years the Cougar program has been relegated to obscurity because of the television contract of the Mountain West Conference.

Despite four straight double-digit-win seasons from 2006 through last season, BYU has been largely out of sight and out of mind in the world of college football.

Next year, thanks to its move to independence and a sparkling new eight-year contract with ESPN,  BYU will be released from its shackles.

But the program will emerge into a much different world than the one that existed when it slipped into a television crevasse.

There was a time when BYU football captured the nation’s fancy.

BYU and a then fledgling ESPN staged exciting games that featured BYU’s innovative wide-open passing game. At the time, virtually every team was still operating run-oriented attacks.

A series of All-American quarterbacks, exciting offenses, sparkling records, breath-taking bowl finishes, a Heisman Trophy and a national championship built a brand that was recognized and acknowledged by college football fans around the country.

Many of those gridiron heroics were broadcast on national television.

Not that long ago, five of the top-10 rated programs in ESPN history were BYU football games. And it wasn’t just Mormons watching either, every college football fan knew when they tuned in to watch BYU, they were in for a treat.

From the 70s into the 90s coaches flocked to Provo in an attempt to learn the passing game from LaVell Edwards and his staff . Eventually, the Cougars became victims of their own success, as programs that could recruit blue chip talent adopted the Edwards west coast offense.

Programs like Miami, Florida State, Oklahoma and the like began to emerge from the stone age and starting tossing the football about. Pretty soon everyone in the country was an Edwards convert.

Just as most other programs began to emerge offensively, BYU began to stagnate some towards the end of the Edwards era. Then came three straight losing season under Gary Crowton, followed by the black hole of the Mnt.

The result is that there is a whole new generation of football fans around the country that have grown up over the past decade or so that are largely unacquainted with BYU, its place in college football history and its brand of offensive innovation.

Today we’ve seen the spread offense rise up to dominate the landscape, and the birth of the pistol offense. Teams like Boise State, TCU and even Utah have supplanted BYU as the the little guy that everyone cheers for. Programs like Oregon have taken offensive fireworks to a completely new level.

The key to success in BYU’s venture into independence is to first and foremost win football games. But a close second for the program is to get back to playing innovative, imaginative, fun and forward-thinking offense. It other words, the Cougars must recapture their brand.

For years BYU was the place for offensive geniuses to dabble, concoct and innovate. Guys like Dewey Warren, Doug Scoville, Ted Tolner, Mike Holmgren, Norm Chow and others all contributed to growing BYU national brand.

From its roots in Provo, the Edwards coaching tree and its philosophy began to branch out over three decades and expand throughout college football. Virtually every offensive guru in the college game today can trace his roots back to the tree at the foot of Y Mountain in one fashion or another.

Perhaps the time has come for BYU to look out across the landscape of college football and find new vibrant branches that can be grafted back into the old tree.