BYU football beats Utah for third straight time, signaling shift in state’s power

The tide has turned. The sea has changed. The coin has flipped. The turf shoe is on the other foot.

BYU football is superior to Utah football. Not by a lot, but by enough.

Everybody admit it now. You can do it. It’s plain to see.

Cougar coaches, players and fans are mature enough to handle that turning, that changing, that flipping, that cleat exchange with, as Kalani Sitake said it, “love and respect,” right? And Utah coaches, players and fans are clear-headed enough to accept hard facts as facts, right?

We’ll have to get back to you on all that.

But scoreboard is scoreboard. There’s no denying that BYU has surpassed Utah in being good at football, as was demonstrated for the third straight time in the blue-and-red rivalry game at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturday night.

Its athletes are better, its teams are better, its program is better. Maybe even its coaches.

One of those coaches, BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick, issued a pronouncement to anybody within earshot as he jubilantly jumped into an elevator after the Cougars beat the Utes, 24-21: “Three wins, that’s officially a win streak.”

So it is. And while not as dominant as Utah’s nine-straight win streak of days gone by, back when it sat on the local throne, it is evidence that the crown of superiority around here has been tossed upon a different head.

There was no hint of a fluke in what happened Saturday night, no elements of ridiculous luck or weirdness or unrighteousness in or to it. The Cougars won a physical game, they absorbed what Utah could throw and run at them and they answered back with force.

“It was a great game, I’m glad we got the victory,” Sitake said in the aftermath. “… All three phases, the guys played their butts off.”

He sat back with a whisper of satisfaction, but not a scream and not a shout: “This is a good moment for our team.”

Other Cougars substantiated the notion.

“The atmosphere was unreal,” said defensive back Tanner Wall, who had an interception on the night. “We knew it was going to be a grinder of a game.”

He added three declarative statements: 1) “I’ve never lost to them,” and 2) “There’s been a great shift,” and 3) “I believe this is the beginning of an even longer streak.”

Said senior receiver Chase Roberts: “I love it. … People ask, ‘What is it like to lose the Holy War?’ I guess I’ll never know.”

He made one other significant statement that was evident in the way the Cougars played and that hammered home the earlier point about who owns whom in this rearranged rivalry: “The team that we had, we knew we weren’t going to lose the game. … It’s the standard that we’ve set.”

That’s quite a proclamation considering that this game was tight throughout. BYU went ahead by a touchdown in the second quarter, Utah tied it, then the Cougars hit a field goal before the half. The third quarter was a scoreless slog, and the fourth went absolutely bonkers — with Utah taking the lead, 14-10, on a 49-yard run by Daniel Bray. Then the Cougars fired straight back with a score of their own, on Parker Kingston’s 12-yard jet sweep, sweeping the Cougars back into the lead.

The most memorable play of the game came with just more than four minutes remaining, when quarterback Bear Bachmeier capped a BYU drive with a 22-yard run that seemed to blend a piece of Barry Sanders, as he evaded would-be tacklers, with a dash of Earl Campbell, when he carried half the Utah defense with him into the end zone.

“I love the physical way he plays,” Sitake said. “He’s a tough kid. … We wanted to put it on his shoulders.”

Think about what Sitake was saying there. The Cougars wanted to put one of the game’s critical moments — perhaps all of them — on a freshman quarterback, a teenager who will grow into a man under center over the next few seasons.

The QB isn’t the only tough Cougar. LJ Martin ran for 122 yards on 26 carries here. It was the third straight game in which the running back has rushed 20 or more times. He is the leading rusher in the Big 12 with 774 yards. Along with Bachmeier, he carried his team on this occasion, again and again plowing into and through the Utah defense.

“I’m sore,” Martin said. “But I’m happy with it.”

Utah scored late, but only a recovered onside kick and a subsequent miracle drive would have made any difference. Neither happened.

Interesting and, in an odd way, impressive it was that this contest was not artistic, rather it was brutish, hard-fought and, at times, downright ugly. Offenses struggled with consistency, betraying themselves with interruptions in drives and unadulterated or adulterated goof-ups. Yet both teams powered on.

Utah, for example, was stopped on fourth down four different times, three of those stops coming when the Utes were in reasonable field-goal range. In a game that was close, when putting points on the board came anything but easy, those nine points could have greatly boosted the Utes. But BYU’s defense deserves props for the manner in which it shut down those mad fourth-down charges.

Asked about the failed attempts, Wall said he and his defensive teammates take pride in slamming what they see as a kind of disrespect back on opponents: “Those were huge. We want them to go for it on fourth down. … We wear that on our chest.”

In the early going, BYU offered up its share of boneheaded decisions and plays, too. But adjustments were put in place, Bachmeier said, and improvement was the result: “We mitigated mistakes. … We just executed and played BYU football.”

And just what is BYU football? He responded, without a flinch: “It’s physical and fast and ferocious, just execution.”

BYU executed physically and fast and ferociously when victory required it and … Utah could not, having defeat’s toll exacted from it.

The conclusion: The Cougars are better than the Utes now. Three consecutive wins against their rivals and counting. Not to mention that BYU finished 11-2 last season and are yet-unbeaten this time around, and, most critically, unblemished thus far in the Big 12. Utah has two league losses to date.

It wasn’t difficult or complicated to sing Utah’s praises when it earned them compared to and over the Cougars when that was the case. It is no longer the case. The pages, the seasons have turned. And BYU, until proved otherwise, is now the author of this rivalry’s book.