Gary Sheide slighted by BYU reunion

A week ago they had a reunion of Brigham Young University's all-time great quarterbacks and my question is: Where in the heck — as they might phrase it in Provo — was Gary Sheide?

Back in 1988, I wrote a book called "And They Came to Pass," about BYU's all-time great quarterbacks and Gary Sheide was the first chapter.

Then came chapters on Gifford Nielsen, Marc Wilson, Jim McMahon, Steve Young and Robbie Bosco, all of whom were at the big QB love-in last weekend, as was Virgil Carter, who came along before the book, and Ty Detmer and Steve Sarkisian, who came after.

All eight deserved to be there, no question about that, but as I verified in researching the book, and as any follower of BYU football through the dank, dark dustbowl years knows, if Gary Sheide hadn't come along when he did, it's possible Virgil Carter would have been standing there at halftime last Saturday all by his lonesome.

Sheide was the first starting quarterback in the grand passing experiment that LaVell Edwards unveiled in his second season as head coach in 1973. It was a desperation move by the program, the equivalent of a Hail Mary. BYU was awful in football and with rare exceptions — such as in 1966, when Carter played and the school won its one and only conference championship since it started fielding football teams in 1922 — had always been awful.

Sheide was the guinea pig in Edwards' pass-first, pass-crazy offense. Nobody knew if it would work. He was like the first guy they pushed out into the ocean and said, let us know if you fall off the edge or if it really is round.

Sheide made it work. He completed more passes in two years than any BYU quarterback ever had in three. The short passes in the flat, the dump-offs to the running backs, finding the seams in the zones — he showed that it could all be successful. If not for him proving the formula, Edwards' career might have lasted 29 weeks instead of 29 years. BYU might never have turned into Quarterback U.

So why wasn't Sheide invited back as one of the all-time great Cougar quarterbacks?

I called Gifford Nielsen, who first came up with the idea of a Y. quarterback reunion. Giff passed the buck to the BYU athletic department, who had taken his reunion idea and transformed it into a million-dollar scholarship drive. The school was in charge of designating what constituted an all-time great, said Nielsen.