Bosco hands off bad luck to Lamb

BYU'S football program appears to have found a replacement for coach Robbie Bosco.

The man is none other than linebacker coach Barry Lamb.

You see, Bosco may have worked with quarterbacks over the years, but he has carried the banner as the chief sufferer of major bad luck. In this regard, Lamb may have replaced him over the weekend.

Bosco has been the designated staff victim, a walking accident ready to happen. In this role, Bosco is a hall of famer at BYU. His near-obituary sheet includes a jogging accident near the mouth of Provo Canyon when a bicyclist collided with him. On another occasion Bosco toppled over the handlebars of a bike while participating in a charity fund-raiser in Park City. His shoulder required surgery from that spill. He also almost died from a spider bite while cleaning up his back yard one summer.

It hasn't been but a couple of months since Bosco left the football coaching staff to raise money in the athletic department, but it appears Bosco's role as the hider of cracked mirrors and designated crack-in-the sidewalk jumper has been cast to another.

Lamb met with reporters Wednesday in LaVell Edwards Stadium to chat about recruits the Cougars signed. The next day he flew to Peru to explore ancient ruins of the Incas with a friend from San Diego named Scott Bennion. It was a vacation just at the right downtime.

Just 24 hours after leaving Utah, Lamb, an avid hiker, was on a trail heading up to the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. Lamb stepped on a rock, and it pitched him down two hills. He toppled over and over, and the fall resulted in the fracture of both bones of his lower left leg.

"He is one tough man," Dr. Kirt Kimball said of Lamb's enduring a trip home more than a day after the spill with a leg broken in three places.

Lamb broke three bones in his leg and fractured his ankle — a dislocation that required surgery similar to that of former Cougar defensive lineman Bryon Frisch.

"We'll be putting in a lot of hardware," Kimball said.

Today, after that real Indiana Jones adventure, Lamb is back in Provo and will undergo surgery to repair the bones. He won't be able to put weight on the injured leg for seven months. Coach Lamb will be doing spring football on crutches, golf cart or wheelchair.

Of course, this is no laughing matter. Neither were any of the Bosco adventures. When Bosco got bit by that spider, he was hospitalized and thought he was going to die. Lamb could have been killed in this fall. He was miles from the nearest medical attention, and even that was primitive at best, just a ragged outpost.