Utah, BYU football: 60-year vets of rivalry love big-game drama

PROVO — Doug Smoot has wanted Utah to lose the rivalry game since he first watched one 60 years ago. Larry Mills has wanted BYU to lose since he went to his first rivalry tussle 58 years ago.

Or have they wanted their teams to win?

In a rivalry as good as BYU-Utah has become, it's sometimes hard to tell.

Smoot and Mills were watching the Y. play the U. long before LaVell Edwards Stadium and Rice-Eccles Stadium were built. They know way more about this rivalry than the coaches, the players and the sportswriters because they've been there, year after year, game after game.

Who better to tell us what this year's game means, and who will win?

Smoot is one of 367 people who've had BYU football season tickets since 1964, which is as far back as the school's records go, but he started going to games as a 14-year-old Provo boy in 1948.

Two years later, Mills, a Salt Lake City kid, became a U. student. He's been going to games ever since and has had season tickets most years.

Both good-natured men love what's become of the rivalry, even though they would prefer their team win every year. What other college football rivalry has been a draw over the past 20 years? Utah has won 10 times and BYU 10 times. How many rivalries can virtually promise nail-biting, down-to-the-wire drama? Ten of the past 11 games have been decided by one touchdown or less. The past three games came down to the final play.

"I'm afraid this one is going to be the same and go down to the last few minutes," Mills said.

Close games weren't always part of the fun.

"Playing BYU, people said, was just like playing a high school," Mills said. "The big game was Utah State University, usually on Thanksgiving. Generally, we beat BYU."

"Generally" is being generous. BYU only won the game twice from 1922 through 1964. Cougar fans were happy when the game finished in a tie, which happened four times.

"We used to count moral victories," Smoot said. "In 1953 on Thanksgiving, we lost 33-32. We felt like that was a moral victory, and that wasn't even a tie."

Smoot doesn't accept moral victories anymore, because of one man. "There isn't such a thing anymore, not after LaVell."

That's right, Mills said. "All of a sudden, along comes LaVell Edwards and, boy, did things change."

BYU dominated for most of the Hall of Fame coach's tenure. Now the teams stand toe-to-toe most years and slug it out. And this year's version, with both teams in the top 14 of the Bowl Championship Series rankings, may mean more than all that came before.