Bowl honors '84 Cougars

SAN DIEGO — They were included in a Holiday Bowl Parade that drew more than 100,000 people to downtown San Diego Thursday.

BYU, national champions, 1984, a team remembered by a city and bowl.

Not many undefeated teams get to play for a college football's national championship these days with the current system, one imposed by a group outside the NCAA's reigning body of university presidents, the BCS.

Utah doesn't get to, and neither does Boise State, both without blemish in 2004.

Although the system wasn't perfect 20 years ago, a simple formula of two national polls by the media and coaches crowned undefeated BYU No. 1, and it stuck. And will forever.

That Cougar squad was honored in the second quarter of the 27th annual Holiday Bowl in Qualcomm Stadium Thursday night during a game between No. 4 Cal-Berkeley and tanked Texas Tech. The Cougar team, of which 42 players and coaches and their families were in San Diego this week, attended the game.

MVPs of that bowl game, quarterback Robbie Bosco and linebacker Leon White, rode in the parade on Thursday.

BYU's title has been long debated, praised and even criticized by media and fans, and since 1984 has been the topic of discussion around college football circles in a debate over ways and means of producing a college football champion.

But for the 1984 MVP of that Cougar squad, quarterback Bosco, he and his teammates have only one comeback they've used the past two decades when the topic crops up.

"Nobody can take it away from us," Bosco said. "It wasn't easy. If another team would have been undefeated, like Oklahoma or South Carolina, we wouldn't have been No. 1. But all we did is do everything we could do — win against every team on our schedule — and what more could we have done?"

Bosco can relate to frustration of other schools like Utah, but in 1984, the Cougars stood alone without blemish. "We just edged up the ladder slowly. Even today I don't know if there is a fair system," he said.

On Thursday, Bosco joined his teammates in San Diego with their families in an open-gate invitation to San Diego's hottest attractions, including the game. Wednesday night, former coach Dick Felt, who'd been in San Diego since Sunday, met in the lobby of the Harbor Marriott Hotel and traded stories with former players like defensive tackle Jim Hermann, backup quarterback Blaine Fowler, offensive lineman Ty Mattingly and defensive back Corey Rassmussen.