BYU football: Washington backs out of 2 games with Cougars

PROVO — What could have been the makings of quite a rivalry between BYU and Washington has been truncated.

The schools announced Tuesday that Washington has exercised an option to back out of games with BYU in 2011 and 2012. However, the Huskies and Cougars will still play their scheduled 2010 game in Provo -- a return game from a 2008 matchup in Seattle.

Washington replaced BYU with a game against Eastern Washington, marking the first time in school history the Huskies have scheduled a Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) team.

Now only three teams in the country - USC, UCLA and Notre Dame - have never scheduled a FCS opponent since the division setup was created in 1978.

According to the Associated Press, Washington athletic director Scott Woodward said that the cost guarantees for scheduling a Football Bowl Subdivision team from a non-automatic qualifying BCS conference have gotten too expensive and that dropping down to add a FCS team is the best move for now.

Aside from the fact that 2008 contest, which BYU won, 28-27, included a dramatic and controversial ending, this series was shaping up to be an intriguing one. Washington's first-year coach is Steve Sarkisian, a former BYU quarterback who led the Cougars to a 14-1 record and a Cotton Bowl victory in 1996. Then there's Seattle-area high school star QB Jake Heaps, who committed to BYU last summer and will enroll in January. With the game in 2011 (which was scheduled to be played in Seattle) canceled, it appears Heaps won't get the chance to play in his hometown as a collegian.

Next year's game will be Washington quarterback Jake Locker's first game in Provo. Locker, who will be a senior in 2010, drew a celebration penalty after scoring a touchdown in the waning moments of last year's game that led to the Cougars blocking a long extra point attempt and preserving the one-point win.

The Cougars have a 3-4 record all-time against Washington, a long-time member of the Pac-10.

"We look forward to playing the University of Washington next season at LaVell Edwards Stadium," BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe said. "Scheduling changes are part of the current college football landscape. We will move forward and continue working on our future football schedules."

BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall didn't try to speculate as to why Washington decided to dump BYU from its schedule at a time when it's becoming increasingly difficult to draw up home-and-home contracts with automatic qualifying BCS opponents.

"Sometimes two games is enough — a home-and-home. People don't want to play four games that close together," he said. "I really can't comment on why they would drop it."

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