Recent success of multiple olympic sport teams at BYU has started an interesting discussion as to whether BYU is actually still a football school.
1984 was 34 years ago. I hate to break it to you but that is not a memory for more than half of today’s BYU fans. In 1984 there were 5.6 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (there are over 16 million today). Now I am NOT claiming or suggesting that all BYU fans are LDS, however a large percentage are.
But when you consider that a six-year-old in 1984 is now 40 years old, that wipes out everyone under 40. So what you have left is fans who were probably LDS or lived in Utah County in 1984 and are now 41 or older.
Sure, since 1984 BYU has had some nice runs in football. 1996 saw the Cougars go 14-1, and we’ll never forget the 2006 when John Beck hit Johnny Harline against Utah, but what else is there to show that BYU is a football school?
Since 1984, BYU has only won more than 10 games five times. Granted that’s a very good record. Most teams can’t make that same claim, but when compared to other sports that BYU has, it doesn’t stand out as much.
Here are the four tiers of BYU sports and where they currently sit based on:
- Recent Success
- Postseason Play
- All-Americans/Pro Athletes
- Prominence of sport (Really tough for an extramural sport to define a school)