Utah State football: Curse of the Aggies

LOGAN — Last week's 23-21 win over Louisiana Tech notwithstanding, Utah State's football team appears to be jinxed.

Hexed, snakebit, bewitched.

Cursed.

For whatever reason, the Aggies' football team has had a run of bad luck lasting nearly 30 years.

Utah State, once the powerhouse football team in the Beehive State, can't catch a break these days. And, this being the Halloween season, maybe it's time to ask why.

Was Romney Stadium, constructed in 1969 after several decades of dominance at a spot just a few blocks south, built on an ancient Indian burial ground?

Does the ghost of Mrs. Crosquist — an early settler of Cache Valley who allegedly weeps in statue form over the graves of her children on the hill overlooking Romney Stadium — haunt the field and spread her despair on Aggie fans?

Is there a bad-luck goat out there somewhere?

Did Utah State trade away its future for a wad of money and create a Logan version of the Curse of the Bambino?

Is Steve Bartman an Aggie?

Or is the reason for Utah State's misery that's felt during the fall something Aggie fans will be more eager to accept?

"There was something that happened in 1982," said F. Ross Peterson, a Utah State vice president and professor of history who has studied and taught folklore. "We beat BYU when Steve Young was playing and the score was 21-17. That was a genuine big-time upset."

And, according to a story Peterson said he was told by a USU player, the loss did not sit well with at least one member of the BYU team.

"I guess there was an exchange after the game and it got pretty heated," Peterson said. "I don't know who it was, but I was told that a BYU player got pretty mad and said to a Utah State player, 'I'm going to shake the dust of Logan off my feet and you'll never have a good football team again.' "

The Aggies lost the final four games of that season, the first three of the next and have had only two seasons with a winning record ever since.

"Maybe that's the beginning of the curse," Peterson said.

In the years following that supposed "shaking of the dust," Utah State has won just 103 games — an average of just 3.9 wins per year — while losing 199.

Prior to offending the Cougar player, the Aggies had won 152 games in 24 seasons

Clearly, there's been something more than just lousy game-planning afflicting the Aggies, right?

"I don't know," USU senior safety James Brindley said after Utah State blew a double-digit lead late in the game to Nevada less than two weeks ago. "Sometimes it seems like we're just snakebit."

Brindley would know.