WHEN TOM HOLMOE arrived in Provo to play football in 1978, his understanding of the BYU–Utah rivalry was next to nothing.
He was not then a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he grew up in Southern California watching the USC–UCLA rivalry with his brother playing for the Bruins. So when the Cougars’ bus rolled up to Rice Stadium in Salt Lake City his freshman year, Holmoe was curious how the atmosphere would measure up. He was redshirting, and BYU had already clinched the WAC title, but the intensity he felt on the sideline was unlike anything he had ever experienced.
“It was a cold day, but it was hot on the field,” said Holmoe, BYU’s athletic director since 2005.
BYU’s six-game winning streak in the rivalry ended that day, and while the Cougars would still be playing in the first-ever Holiday Bowl — back when reaching a bowl game was a genuine achievement — it was a bitter pill for Holmoe to swallow. He remembered a cartoon in a local newspaper downplaying the bowl bid in light of the rivalry loss.
“It was not a great feeling, and that was my first experience,” Holmoe said.
Holmoe went on to win all four games he participated in — three with Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham as a fellow standout on defense — and over the past four-plus decades has become convinced the “Holy War” is as intense as any game in college football.
“I love college football,” he said. “And I think one of the greatest things about college football is the rivalries. I don’t know where BYU-Utah ranks, I just know it’s one of the great rivalries of all time.”
The first meeting took place in 1896, and for most of its history, it was played as a conference game. After starting their early days in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, the schools moved as a pair to the Skyline Conference (1938), to the WAC (1962) and, finally, to the Mountain West (1999) before the Pac-12 came calling and pried Utah away before the 2011 season, ushering in BYU’s independent era and move to the Big 12 last year.
Those who have taken part in this rivalry over the past 13 years say the lack of conference stakes had no bearing on game day. In fact, Utah’s departure and elevation to Power 5 status introduced a new point of contention between the schools. Still, things were different. They started playing in September instead of November and — for the first time since World War II — took years off.
“I think Utah tried to diminish it a little bit, because now they were in the big leagues and BYU wasn’t, and I think BYU fans felt like they were being dissed a little bit,” said former BYU AD Val Hale, a lifelong BYU fan who is writing a book about the 24 years he spent working in the athletic department. “Utah was trying to say, ‘Oh, this game isn’t that important to us anymore.’ So, I think there was a little bit of offense taken on the part of BYU fans. I think some BYU fans would say that the Utah fans were a little bit snobbish, and were trying to look down their noses at BYU because we weren’t in the Pac-12 like they were.”
Last summer, the future of the rivalry was in jeopardy. Conference realignment has a nasty habit of breaking up rivalries, and while it had already been chipping away at the tradition in Utah, BYU’s move to the Big 12 gave the Cougars less scheduling flexibility and less incentive to schedule a difficult nonconference game.
In a strange twist of fate, however, the Pac-12 collapsing created a domino effect that led to Utah joining the Big 12, reuniting the Utes and Cougars as conference rivals once again. On Saturday (10:15 p.m. ET on ESPN), Utah hosts No. 9 BYU in what could be the most consequential rivalry game for BYU in a generation, as a conference title will result in a berth in the College Football Playoff.
ONE OF THE first things neutral fans might notice from the game is that both teams will wear their home uniforms: Utah in red; BYU in blue.
It stems from Holmoe’s roots in Southern California. For several decades, as UCLA and USC shared the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, they both donned home uniforms. It’s a tradition that went away in 1982 when UCLA started playing home games at the Rose Bowl, but USC coach Pete Carroll brought it back in 2008, despite it being a violation of NCAA rules. The rule changed in 2009, permitting both teams to wear home uniforms, and soon after Holmoe went to his counterpart at Utah, Chris Hill.
“I said, ‘One of the great things about the USC-UCLA rivalry is they play in their home colors for every game. Let’s do it,'” Holmoe said. “And he goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I say, ‘Well, you wear red, we’ll wear blue no matter what the sport is or where the game’s played.’ And so we started this tradition (in 2011), and it’s kind of fun because the color and pageantry of college football comes out.”
For Utah natives like BYU captain Tyler Batty, the game’s importance is ingrained into their consciousness from a young age.
“My earliest memory was probably in elementary school,” Batty said at Big 12 media days this summer. “Just me and a bunch of friends getting together at someone’s house and watching the game. It’s not like you’re really watching that much of the game when you’re 10, 11 years old, but you’re catching on to how competitive it is. It’s pretty legendary.”
Some of the most legendary moments are only tangential to the results.
In 1999, there was an infamous incident in which a BYU fan came over the railing from the stands and attempted to tackle a male Utah cheerleader, who had been running with a flag.
“The cheerleader jumped on top of him and started pummeling him,” Hale said. “Everybody in the stadium — 65,000 people — is watching this. All I could see was someone pummeling someone on the ground. I thought it was an usher.
“So, I went running down the sideline — here’s the AD running down the sideline — and by the time I got down there it had been broken up. I went to talk to the Utah cheerleading coach and he was telling me what happened, and to this day there are still stories out there that I got in a fight with the cheerleader. You know how stories get warped and twisted.”
Another bizarre moment that doesn’t get twisted came in 2012, the year Utah fans rushed the field three times during and after the Utes’ 24-21 upset of then-No. 25 BYU. The first came after fans thought time had expired following an incomplete pass, when there was still 1 second left on the clock. The next came during a 51-yard missed field-goal attempt, which triggered a 15-yard penalty and gave BYU a second, closer field goal try. When that one failed, too, the fans rushed the field for a third time.
UP UNTIL LAVELL Edwards was named the BYU head coach prior to the 1972 season, the rivalry was lopsided in favor of Utah. Then, with Edwards at the helm for the next 29 years, BYU controlled the series.
In 2001, the first year after Edwards retired, BYU took a 10-0 record into the game in Provo and trailed 21-10 with 3:30 to play before Luke Staley, the eventual Doak Walker Award winner, scored two touchdowns in the final minutes as the Cougars sought to become the first nonpower-conference program to reach a BCS bowl. (They would lose three weeks later at Hawai’i and miss the BCS.)
When quarterback Alex Smith signed with Utah a couple of months later, the pendulum swung back in the Utes’ favor. Smith’s introduction into the rivalry was similar to Holmoe’s: He came from Southern California, didn’t know the history and watched the first game, in 2002, from the sideline.
“I think both teams were not very good at that point, but I remember thinking how crazy the game was,” said Smith, who is now an NFL analyst for ESPN. “Sold out and just how intense the game was for both sides.”
When Urban Meyer was named coach at Utah the following year, he turned up the heat on the rivalry, refusing to call BYU by name, referring to them only as the “team down south.”
Come rivalry time, the Utes were 8-2 and needed to beat BYU to win the Mountain West title. The forecast called for a blizzard.
“Just calling it snow wouldn’t do it justice,” Smith said. “It was a complete whiteout blizzard, and our senior running back had gotten hurt, so we were down to a true freshman, I think. I’ll never forget on the sideline, Urban was like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna call your number a bunch. Just hang on to the football.’ I think I had like 24 carries for 40 yards or so, but we won the game 3-0 and it was awesome. Just an ugly, ugly game, but it didn’t matter. What a good drive back to Salt Lake from Provo.”
The shutout compounded the disappointment for BYU, which entered the game having scored in an NCAA-record 361 straight games dating back to 1975 — a streak that has since been passed by Michigan, Florida and TCU.
“It was something we bragged about all the time at the end of every game,” Hale said.
The next year, BYU’s visit to Utah set the stage for one of the best days in Utes history.
“[ESPN’s] ‘College GameDay’ came to Utah for the first time ever. We had a chance to clinch our undefeated season, break the BCS, win our conference and beat BYU all at the same time,” Smith said. “Incredibly special. Sold out crowd again, the whole country is watching, to get the win and the students rush the field and there are sombreros everywhere. Pretty epic win and, again, to do it against BYU made it even sweeter.”
BYU got some measure of revenge two years later with “Beck to Harline,” an iconic finish that saw the Cougars win with an 11-yard touchdown pass from John Beck to Jonny Harline on the final play of the game that became known as the “Answered Prayer.”
Then the Cougars followed that memorable win with another the next year, best remembered for a fourth-and-18 conversion on a pass from Max Hall to Austin Collie, which prompted Collie to deliver a famous line: “Magic happens.”
After Utah moved to the Pac-12 in 2011, BYU had a hard time conjuring that magic again.
“They started to take some of our kids away on the recruiting trail because they were part of a [Power 5] conference,” Holmoe said. “And that was hard on us.”
Utah won the first eight games in the series after leaving the Mountain West, including a 2015 appearance in the Las Vegas Bowl, when the nonconference game was on a two-year hiatus.
BYU ended the losing skid with a 26-17 win in 2021 — when Utah would go on to win the Pac-12 and play in the Rose Bowl — but that was the only meeting in the past four seasons.
Had the Pac-12 remained intact, infrequent matchups likely would have remained the norm. Utah’s move to the Big 12 this summer changed that.
“The state gets wildly excited about that game, and it has been hit and miss the last several years,” Whittingham said. “But now that we’re both in the same conference, and it’s going to be an annual thing. It will be the single biggest sporting event in the state of Utah every year.
WHEN BIG 12 teams gathered in Las Vegas in July, it was Utah that received all the preseason adoration. Utah was selected as the favorite to win the conference, largely in part due to the expected return of quarterback Cam Rising, who led the Utes to Pac-12 titles in 2021 and 2022.
BYU’s Darius Lassiter was complimentary of the Utes at the time, but issued a warning ahead of their arrival to the Big 12.
“I think it’s going to be more of a surprise to them than what they might think,” he said. “… It’s not an easy league at all. There are a lot of good teams here and then we just added three other teams including themselves, so it is not going to be just a walk in the park for them.”
Perhaps he undersold it.
After starting the season 4-0, Utah has dropped its past four and lost Rising to another season-ending injury. The Utes are 1-4 in the Big 12, and their dismal offensive performances led to the departure of offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig. At this point, if the Utes reach bowl eligibility it would be a surprise.
“Certainly the seasons have gone in completely different directions than what was anticipated at the onset,” Whittingham said. “I guess that shows that those preseason rankings and thoughts really don’t mean a whole lot.”
BYU is the inverse example.
The Cougars debuted at No. 9 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday, and while there are compelling arguments for why they should be higher, it’s an enviable position for almost the entire country.
Playing spoiler isn’t what the Utes originally had in mind, but it is a powerful motivator.
“To own the state of Utah, to sour out those guys’ season, it would be big for us and the team,” said Utes running back Jaylon Glover, who also levied an expletive toward BYU in an interview with local reporters this week, for which he issued a follow-up apology on social media.
Just as they were for Holmoe all those years ago, the rivalry burns hot. And while pride has been enough to fuel this rivalry, meaningful stakes are sure to turn up the heat.
It all comes down to this. The Presidents’ Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets host the St. Louis Blues in the 200th Game 7 in Stanley Cup playoffs history Sunday (7 p.m. ET, TBS).
One team will advance to the second round, while the other will get an early start to the offseason — and try to fix what went wrong.
For the Blues, this is the club’s 19th all-time Game 7, the most of any non-Original Six team. They have gone 10-8 in Games 7s, with the most recent one being the 2019 Stanley Cup Final against the Boston Bruins, which they won 4-1.
This version of the Jets has much less Game 7 history on which to draw; their only Game 7 was a second-round victory over the Nashville Predators in 2018.
Who wins this one? We’ve gathered the ESPN hockey family to identify the key players to watch in the contest — as well as their final score predictions.
Who is the one key player you’ll be watching in Jets-Blues?
Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporter: If he plays, it’s Mark Scheifele. The hit in Game 5 from Brayden Schenn and/or Radek Faksa generated quite a bit of conversation about what is arguably the most physically demanding series in the first round. Scheifele’s play this season and this series prior to the hit reinforces what makes him a legit top-line center in this league. We saw how the Jets maneuvered around his absence for the final two periods of Game 5, while Game 6 proved why they need contributions from everyone if he can’t go.
But again, that’s if Scheifele plays. He skated Saturday in a tracksuit, with Scott Arniel saying the center will be a game-time decision Sunday.
Arda Öcal, NHL broadcaster:Connor Hellebuyck is the obvious answer here for me because he’s been “Vezina” at home (especially Game 2) and “Vezina from Temu” on the road.
Hellebuyck has allowed four or more goals in seven straight road playoff games, which ties the second longest such streak in Stanley Cup playoff history. But Game 7 is at home. The pressure is on but he’s in comfortable confines, surrounded by a “Whiteout.” Which version of Hellebuyck do we get Sunday night?
Kristen Shilton, NHL reporter:Connor Hellebuyck, of course. Has there been a Jekyll/Hyde performance like this in recent years?
The Vezina finalist can play lights-out at home and like a fish out of water on the road. Does that trend continue in Game 7? What version of the goalie shows up for this one?
But as a bonus, I’ll toss Pavel Buchnevich into this equation. He’s been driving the Blues’ offense, and if Hellebuyck is on his A-game then St. Louis is going to need Buchnevich to channel his hat trick energy from Game 3 to help the Blues pull off a stunning road win.
Greg Wyshynski, NHL reporter:Jordan Binnington renewed his title as one of the NHL’s most clutch goaltenders with his 31-save performance in Team Canada’s 4 Nations Face-Off championship win over the U.S. — including six saves in overtime. He first earned it in 2019, backstopping the Blues to the Stanley Cup with Game 7 wins over Dallas and Boston.
Now he’s got a chance to reestablish those credentials.
Binnington had a 0.82 goals-against average and a .968 save percentage in those prior Game 7s. While Hellebuyck has been terrible in St. Louis, Binnington hasn’t been much better in Winnipeg, generating an .861 save percentage and a 3.44 goals-against average and giving up four goals in two of the three games. But as 4 Nations showed, Binnington can meet the moment. (Although this time, Kyle Connor will actually be in the lineup for the opposition. Not that we’re bitter or anything.)
The final score will be _____.
Clark: 4-3 Jets. There have been a few themes in this series. The first being that offense hasn’t been an issue — the teams have combined to score more than six goals in all but one game. The second is that the home team has won every game; I say that continues, and the Jets advance.
Öcal: 6-5 Jets. Hellebyuck doesn’t have his best game, but the Jets outscore that challenge, and Kyle Connor scores another third-period goal in this series to win it.
Shilton: 5-4 Jets. The Jets have been too good on home ice to let this one slip away. That’s not to say a St. Louis win would be surprising, but even if Hellebuyck is off, Winnipeg’s offense should be able to provide enough buffer that the Jets can squeak through with a narrow victory to advance.
Wyshynski: 5-3 Jets. The Jets would be toast if this game were played in St. Louis because it’s a demonstrable fact that Hellebuyck is a disaster on the road in the playoffs. He’s slightly below replacement at home in the postseason, but Winnipeg will take that considering his three removals on the road.
The Blues are first in the playoffs in 5-on-5 offense and goals-for percentage at home. But Winnipeg is second in both categories. Hellebuyck calms down, and the offense gets ratcheted up at home, especially now that Nikolaj Ehlers has a game under his belt, having not played since April 12 due to a foot injury.
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes have signed goaltender Frederik Andersen to a one-year contract for next season, worth $2.75 million for the 35-year-old veteran.
General manager Eric Tulsky announced the deal Saturday, a little over 48 hours before his team starts the second round of the playoffs against the Washington Capitals.
Andersen could earn up to $750,000 in incentives for games played and his participation in a potential run to the Eastern Conference finals next season. He would get $250,000 for playing 35 or more games, another $250,000 for getting to 40 and $250,000 if the Hurricanes reach the East finals and he plays in at least half of the playoff games.
“Frederik has played extremely well for us and ranks in the top 10 all-time for winning percentage by an NHL goalie,” Tulsky said. “We’re excited that he will be staying with the team for next season.”
Andersen and the Hurricanes, the No. 2 seed in the Metropolitan Division, advanced past the New Jersey Devils in Round 1 last week. They will meet the Capitals, who won the division crown, for the right to make the NHL’s final four.
Extending Andersen could give the team a goaltending tandem with Pyotr Kochetkov for less than $6 million combined.
Anderson, a Denmark native who previously played for the Anaheim Ducks and Toronto Maple Leafs, has become coach Rod Brind’Amour’s most trusted option in net. He is expected to return to the starting role for Game 1 of the Capitals series after getting injured in the first round against New Jersey.