Utes make final trip to Laramie as football rivalry with Wyoming is set to end

LARAMIE, WYO. — So this is how they decided to handle the breakup.

It's a pleasant 65 degrees at kickoff, with just enough of a breeze blowing off the Snowy Mountains so you can smell the ribs barbecuing out on the tailgates.

You want to play in sissy Pac-10 weather, the Wyoming Cowboys seem to be saying as their 106-year football-playing relationship with the University of Utah slams to a halt, OK, we'll play in sissy Pac-10 weather.

Heaven knows, as do the Utes, it's not always like this. Matter of fact, it's almost never like this.

In a town on the high plains that got its name from someone dying (In 1810 Jacques LaRamie was a French fur trapper who reputedly froze to death in the vicinity that now bears his surname), the atmosphere has always been, well, let's say threatening — liable to turn on you at any moment, unpredictable, ornery as an old heifer.

Ute coach Kyle Whittingham knows. He was a sophomore linebacker on the 1981 BYU team that traveled to Laramie and amid clear skies at kickoff raced to a 14-0 lead. Then a blizzard rolled in from Montana. By halftime the stadium was a whiteout. By the end of the game the BYU players could barely see the scoreboard to make out the final score: Wyoming 33, Cougars 20. Jim McMahon lost four games in three years as a quarterback — that was the last one.

"I couldn't feel my feet," remembers Whittingham.

That was the game after which BYU coach LaVell Edwards made Laramie and its hospitable weather even more famous. After blowing the lead and getting beat, the Cougars had to load in their buses and negotiate the drive over the pass to Denver for their plane ride home, not making it back to Provo until three in the morning.

A few hours later, the coach woke up to a crystal clear Provo morning, with the sun rising over Squaw Peak behind his home on the east bench.

He turned to his wife, Patti, and said, "I'd rather lose and live in Provo than win and live in Laramie."

He did not add, "That's off the record," which explains how the quote, uttered in the early a.m. in his bedroom, ended up in a national magazine.

"She'd heard Sports Illustrated was paying $100 for a quote," LaVell says. "So she sent it in."

LaVell, being LaVell, turned it into just another way to make friends. The next time BYU went to Laramie he agreed to do tongue-in-cheek promos for the university and the Chamber of Commerce — "Come to Laramie, enjoy the great weather." The Cowboys took it as a compliment.