I first published these rankings around three years ago, and at the conclusion of a historically great 2024 BYU football season, I decided to try my hand at ranking that team against the other top performers in program history. So, here you have it—my top 10 BYU football seasons of all time:
#10: 2001 (12-2, 7-0 MWC)—In a way, the 2001 BYU football team was only half a team—it featured one of the most productive offenses in program history, headlined by Doak Walker Award winner Luke Staley, but defense was...well...a bit of an afterthought at times. Feasting mostly on mediocre Mountain West competition, the Cougar offense averaged a jaw-dropping 46.8 points per game. The defense, though, allowed an astonishing 30.5! Staley and his chronically underrated backfield-mate, quarterback Brandon Doman, allowed first-year head coach Gary Crowton to essentially rely on a strategy of outscoring the competition. And for a while, it worked—the Cougars raced to a 12-0 record, including a perfect mark in Mountain West play. Unfortunately, while BYU had done what it could to put together a competitive schedule, even adding what was, at the time, a rare SEC opponent in Mississippi State, the Mountain West was disastrously weak in 2001 and the Cougars didn't end up playing anyone really good. Of the nation's top teams heading into the final weeks of the season, BYU had far and away the worst schedule, and the nascent BCS used that excuse to leave the Cougars out of a major bowl game. With their motivation shattered by the BCS snub and with Luke Staley lost to an ACL tear, the Cougars barely bothered to show up to their final regular season game, losing by the eye-popping score of 72-45 at Hawaii. They also fell to #23 Louisville in the Liberty Bowl. It was a deflating end to what had once looked like a historically great season. Truth be told, I debated whether to include this team in my top 10, both because its defense was so bad and because it utterly collapsed without Staley in its last two games. I decided to include the 2001 Cougars because they won 12 games in a row—a difficult feat regardless of schedule strength—and because Luke Staley's Doak Walker Award win stands alongside Ty Detmer's Heisman Trophy as one of the defining individual achievements in BYU football history. The Cougars finished the 2001 season ranked #24 by the Coaches’ poll and #25 by the AP.
#9: 1990 (10-3-0, 7-1-0 WAC)—This list would not be complete without the season that brought BYU football perhaps more national acclaim and media attention than any other, including 1984. The Cougars shocked the college football world early in the season by humiliating #1 Miami in Provo, and their campaign ended with Ty Detmer winning the Heisman Trophy—the single greatest individual achievement ever by a BYU player. However, all was not well with BYU football in 1990. I am willing to excuse the debacle that was the Holiday Bowl because Detmer was already dealing with nagging injuries going into the game and then proceeded to separate both shoulders in a 65-14 loss to Texas A&M. But the Cougars' losses to mediocre Hawaii and Oregon teams severely clouded what was otherwise a historic season, and those two losses keep the 1990 team from rising any higher on this list. The Hawaii game was especially brutal—on the heels of Detmer's Heisman announcement, the Cougars had their bells rung 59-28 by a 7-win Rainbow Warrior squad. In spite of all that, the greatness of Ty Detmer and the Miami win made this season incredibly special and worthy of its place on this list. BYU fans may never see production quite like Detmer's again. The Cougars finished the season ranked #17 by the Coaches’ poll and #22 by the AP.
#8: 2020 (11-1)—It was hard to decide whether to include this team and where to put it. On one hand, the 2020 Cougars lost just one game and featured five 2021 NFL draft picks—headlined, of course, by Zach Wilson, whose performance was so sensational that it cemented him as a top 10 Heisman Trophy vote-getter and induced the Jets to draft him 2nd overall, making him the highest Cougar ever selected. On the other hand, like several on this list, this team faced an extremely unimpressive schedule. Not that it was their fault—Tom Holmoe deserves genuine credit both for assembling an ambitiously difficult 2020 schedule and then reassembling any kind of schedule at all when the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the original. But fair or not, the fact remains that in 2020, the Cougars played only two ranked opponents—a Boise State team that ultimately proved overrated, and a Coastal Carolina team that handed them their only loss—and did not face off against a power conference opponent. This team deserved better. It was historically talent-heavy in a way few BYU teams have ever been, and it should have had a great schedule against which to prove itself. The Cougars finished the 2020 season ranked 11th by both the AP and Coaches' polls. The final CFP standings, released prior to the Cougars' 49-23 shellacking of UCF in the Boca Raton Bowl, ranked them 16th.
#7: 2009 (11-2, 7-1 MWC)—My first real memory as a BYU fan is of celebrating with my family when Andrew George finally scored his game-winning touchdown in OT against Utah, and then collecting on a bet (the nature of which I don't completely remember) with my Utah fan friend at school. That game cemented my BYU fandom forever; it and two others from this season also made my list of Bronco Mendenhall’s best wins, including the number one game, which was the Cougars’ stunning 14-13 upset of #3 Oklahoma. This was arguably the most complete team of the Bronco Mendenhall era. Harvey Unga was dominant running the football and set BYU's all-time career rushing yardage record, while Max Hall directed a classic BYU aerial assault en route to becoming the winningest quarterback in school history. Many of Hall's passes found their way to tight end Dennis Pitta, arguably the greatest in a long line of BYU legends at that storied position. And just ask Heisman-winning Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford how good the BYU defense was! This season marked the pinnacle of Coach Mendenhall's tenure, and was BYU's last hurrah before years of independence-induced mediocrity. The Cougars finished the season ranked #12 by both the AP and Coaches’ polls and #14 in the final BCS standings.
#6: 1979 (11-1-0, 7-0-0 WAC)—The 1979 Cougars produced the first really special season of LaVell Edwards' career, as Marc Wilson rewrote the NCAA passing record book while leading his team to an 11-0 regular season record. Opening the season with a thrilling 18-17 upset of #14 Texas A&M on the road, the Cougars tore through the remainder of their schedule with vicious ease—nobody in the WAC was even on their plane of existence. Their regular season finale was a road matchup against San Diego State, the winner of which would claim the WAC championship, and the game was billed by the media as a clash of the conference's titans—ESPN even obtained the rights to televise it nationally. They...probably wished they hadn't, as most viewers changed the channel at halftime with BYU leading 35-7, having scored on every possession in the first half (the Cougars more or less sleepwalked from there to a 63-14 win). Unbeaten, untied, and ranked #9 going into the 1979 Holiday Bowl, this team might have clinched a final ranking in the top 5 and a significantly higher rating on this list if they could only have beaten a much inferior Indiana team…but it was not to be. The BYU defense collapsed in the second half, and a botched punt led to a Hoosier touchdown and 38-37 lead. Then, normally reliable BYU placekicker Brent Johnson (who had already made his first three kicks of the day) blew what would have been a game-winning field goal. The stunning upset loss dropped the Cougars to final rankings of #12 in the Coaches’ poll and #13 in the AP poll.
#5: 1980 (12-1-0, 6-1-0 WAC)—The 1980 season started inauspiciously for BYU with a shocking upset loss to New Mexico, but the Cougars then proceeded to go on an absolute rampage. Jim McMahon took a match to the NCAA record book and started his own, with 34 records to his name by season’s end. The Cougars rang up the most points in a single game in school history during an 83-7 rout of UTEP, and established what is still the Holy War record for margin of victory with a 56-6 win over Utah. Then came the 1980 Holiday Bowl. For 55:27 of game time, the Cougars played some of their worst football of the season, digging themselves into a 45-25 deficit against the highly-touted SMU Mustangs. For the final, magical 4:33, however, those same Cougars woke up and scored an incredible 21 straight points en route to a ridiculous 46-45 come-from-behind victory—the first bowl win in program history. The mark this team left on college football history makes 1980 one of the most significant BYU football seasons of all time. The Cougars finished the 1980 season ranked #11 by the Coaches’ poll and #12 by the AP.
#4: 2024 (11-2, 7-2 Big 12)—Yes, I'm ranking a two-loss team as the fourth best in the history of BYU football. But this was no ordinary two-loss BYU team. The 2024 Cougars faced the most difficult schedule in program history, headlined by road games against SMU and Arizona State teams which were both selected for the inaugural 12-team college football playoff, as well as a tough home matchup against a very good Kansas State team and a bowl game against Colorado and newly-crowned Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. As might be expected, the Cougars, who had gone 5-7 against a significantly weaker schedule in 2023, were not expected to do well. Most prognosticators favored them to win 3-6 games—optimistic BYU fans hoped for 7 wins. The Cougars did get to 7 wins...in their first 7 games. And then, they won two more, including a road win over Utah for the first time since 2006, to reach 9-0. A couple of heartbreaking late-season losses, including to the aforementioned Arizona State, derailed what was looking like a very promising playoff push, but the Cougars won their final regular season game against Houston and then stunned the college football world by annihilating #23 Colorado, with all of its hype and prestige, in the Alamo Bowl—notably, the game with the largest TV audience in BYU football history. It's hard to overstate how insane this team's performance was—going 11-2 against the hardest schedule in program history, in just the team's second season at the P4 level, with much the same roster that went 5-7 a year earlier, is an unbelievable achievement. It doesn't feel real. But this gritty, tough, and unified team did the impossible. The Cougars finished the 2024 season ranked #13 in the AP poll, #14 in the Coaches' poll, and #17 in the final CFP standings (released before their bowl win over Colorado).
#3: 1983 (12-1-0, 7-0-0 WAC)—You would be hard-pressed to find a more completely statistically dominant BYU team than this one. Offensively, the 1983 Cougars averaged a ridiculous 44 points per game led by superstar quarterback Steve Young, who won the Davy O’Brien and Sammy Baugh awards. Many a WAC defensive coordinator considered a change in profession after facing BYU's offensive assault, and that went for PAC-10 teams as well, as a very good UCLA team discovered the hard way. And let’s not forget the star-studded defense, which held opponents to just 20.9 ppg for the season. Suffering just one loss, a shootout defeat in their season opener against Baylor, the Cougars rolled to an 11-1 regular season and finished their campaign with a dramatic Holiday Bowl victory over Mizzou, setting the stage for a national championship the following year. The 1983 Cougars featured a number of future NFL players; best-known among them, of course, is Young himself, who had a Hall of Fame career with the 49ers. The 1983 BYU football team finished ranked #7 by both the AP and Coaches’ polls.
#2: 1996 (14-1, 8-0 WAC)—The 1996 BYU football team could have so easily made #1 on this list but for one game: a road loss to Washington which will go down as one of BYU's all-time most gut-wrenching defeats, and which makes this team the greatest "What if?" in program history. Aside from that game, the '96 Cougars were an unstoppable juggernaut—a virtually perfect football team with no major weaknesses. They won fourteen games, still a program record. They beat #13 Texas A&M 41-37 in Cougar Stadium on national TV in the first game of the college football season. They finished the season with a 19-15 victory over #14 Kansas State in the Cotton Bowl. Most importantly, though, this BYU team began a conversation about the unfairness of the Bowl Alliance/BCS system which would eventually culminate in its demise following the 2013 season. This team was stacked with talent. Chad Lewis, Itula Mili, Brian McKenzie, James Dye, and Sammy Baugh Trophy winner Steve Sarkisian headlined the offense; the defense featured stars like Henry Bloomfield, Omarr Morgan, Tim McTyer, and WAC Defensive Player of the Year Shay Muirbrook. The Cougars played a relatively weak conference slate, but non-conference strength of schedule was enough to land them in a New Year’s Day bowl for the first and only time in program history. BYU finished the season ranked #5 by both the AP and Coaches’ polls.
#1: 1984 (13-0-0, 7-0-0 WAC)—To me, it would be unconscionable to place any other season at the top of this list, as this was the season that set the gold standard for BYU football success. Thirteen wins. Not one single loss or tie. A perfect, unblemished season. There are scores of power conference teams that have never been close to competing for a national championship, but in 1984, BYU from the lowly WAC defied the odds to win it all. From their season-opening win over #3 Pittsburgh to their gutsy finish against Michigan in the Holiday Bowl, the Cougars gutted out win after win. It wasn't always pretty—the Hawaii game was especially messy, but the Cougars survived, in part because of this insane play by Kyle Morrell. But when all was said and done, the Cougars were the only undefeated and untied team in college football and every major championship selector ranked them #1. All these years later, 1984 stands as the peak of BYU football dominance and the yardstick against which every subsequent season has been judged.