BYU football: Edwards built great system, coaching staff

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the sixth in an eight-part series celebrating the 25th anniversary of BYU's 1984 national college football championship.

TODAY: How Cougars head coach LaVell Edwards accomplished the next-to-impossible — guiding BYU to the national title.

SATURDAY: Reliving the national championship season through memorable quotes from around the country in 1984.

PROVO — Little did anyone know at the time, but a decision made by then-BYU President Dallin H. Oaks in 1972 laid the groundwork for BYU's national championship season 12 years later.

President Oaks took a chance by promoting the defensive coordinator, LaVell Edwards, to head coach, though Edwards had never been a head coach before. Edwards was handed the reins of a mediocre program that had experienced only a handful of winning seasons in its history. The goal back in '72 was to compete for a conference championship. What about the thought of winning a national title?

"Not even in my wildest dreams," Edwards says now.

So how did it happen?

Robbie Bosco, the quarterback of that '84 team, says that though Edwards was a defensive-minded coach, his ability to be forward-thinking by embracing the forward pass paid huge dividends for the Cougars.

"The one thing that really set LaVell apart was looking into the future and knowing that the passing game would be what it is today," Bosco says. "He didn't grow up throwing the ball. But he knew if we were going to be successful and win a lot of football games, and the types of players we had at BYU, it was going to be through the air that we were going to get this done.

"It didn't start out great for him, but he stuck with it. That's what made him so successful — being level-headed, being calm when things aren't going good and making the right decisions. Sticking with the passing game was the best thing that ever happened to BYU."

Trevor Matich, an offensive lineman on the '84 team who is now a college football analyst for ESPN, explains that BYU's national title 25 years ago was partially a product of the system the Cougars ran — a dizzying passing scheme that confused opposing defenses.

"One thing that helped BYU at the time was that the offense was so innovative," he says. "In college football, people weren't doing that. We had an edge because we played so many defenses that didn't quite know what to do about it. We ran our offense with a very high level of execution.