No matter what happens in Thursday’s Sweet 16 showdown with No. 2 seed Alabama, BYU athletics is in the midst of a golden run. If the Cougars were a publicly traded company and you had bought their stock a few years ago, you’d be able to retire.
In seven months the Cougars have made national headlines in football, basketball, track, cross-country and the Olympic Games. Their latest victories came in last week’s NCAA Tournament, when the Cougars dispatched VCU and Wisconsin.
Things weren’t looking so good for the basketball team the first two-and-half months of the season. They were 11-6 in mid-January, and five of those wins came against nonconference hors d’oeuvres — Central Arkansas, UC Riverside, Queens University, Idaho and Mississippi Valley State. The Cougars began conference play by losing four of six games.
Since then they have won 15 of 18 games, climbed to No. 17 in the national rankings, and won two games in the NCAA Tournament to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2011 and only the third time in the modern era.
All of this comes on the heels of a football season in which BYU won 11 of 13 games and finished No. 13 in the final poll, clobbering Colorado in the Alamo Bowl. They were unbeaten through their first nine games and climbed to No. 7 in the AP rankings before losing two games by four and five points.
Only four schools who made the Sweet 16 also finished in the top 25 of the national football polls — BYU, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Alabama.
While the football team was rolling, BYU won both the men’s and women’s NCAA cross-country championships, becoming only the fifth school ever to pull off the double.
This was preceded by a summer in which seven current or former BYU distance runners qualified for the Paris Olympics Games — the highest total by any school in the country. Kenneth Rooks won the silver medal, and Conner Mantz and Clayton Young claimed top-10 finishes in the marathon. The women’s track team finished ninth in the recent NCAA indoor championships and alumnus Whitney Morgan placed fourth in the world track championships.
These are heady times for the Cougars. There is perhaps only one school year that surpasses it for across-the-board success: 1980-81.
In 1980, BYU lost its season opener on the football field (by four points to New Mexico), then won 12 straight. The season concluded with the famous 46-45 “Miracle Bowl” win over SMU, in which the Cougars overcame a 20-point deficit in the final four minutes, scoring on a 41-yard pass on the final play. The Cougars finished No. 11 in the national polls.
This was followed by a basketball season that was much the same story, including another miraculous and now mythical finish. The Cougars, who featured three future NBA players, won 25 of 32 games and beat Notre Dame in the Sweet 16 after Danny Ainge weaved through defenders the length of the court for a layup at the buzzer. The Cougars finished No. 16 in the rankings.
It was the year of Danny Ainge and Jim McMahon, still the best basketball and football players ever to play for the school. Ainge was named national player of the year, averaging almost 25 points per game, and finished with a career total of 2,467 points (this was before the creation of a 3-point shot). McMahon threw for 5,017 yards and 51 touchdowns and was named first-team All-American. Ainge and McMahon went on to win NBA championships and a Super Bowl.
While Ainge was leading the BYU men, Tina Gunn was helping the women’s team win 24 games and leading the nation in scoring. She became the school’s all-time scoring leader with 2,759 points (again, without the 3-point shot).
That spring the golf team won the NCAA championships, and the baseball team won 46 games. Wally Joyner and Rick Aguilera went on to become all-stars in the Major Leagues.
It was a rare moment when multiple sports ranked among the best in the nation in the same year. Forty-four years later it has happened again.
