When BYU ruled the world and what the 1984 title says about the 2024 season
-
Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff Writer
PROVO, UTAH, IS a city of about 115,000, nestled into the rocks on the back side of the Rocky Mountains. It is the fourth-largest city in Utah, and it’s made up primarily of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And because of a miraculous run of football prowess and perfect breaks 40 years ago, Provo will forever be known as a national title town.
In 1984, LaVell Edwards’ BYU Cougars rolled to a perfect record, watched as everyone around them fell at just the right time, and celebrated maybe the least likely title in the sport’s history. And 40 years later, they’re positioning themselves for a spot in an expanded playoff that, in a roundabout way, their own success helped to eventually deliver. Kalani Sitake’s unbeaten squad is up to 13th in the AP poll and hosts Oklahoma State Cowboys on ESPN on Friday night (10:15 p.m. ET). Let’s look back at the 1984 title and toward the promise of 2024.
“You play football, and you win”
“OUR EXPECTATIONS WERE, we were going to win every game,” said ESPN’s Trevor Matich, BYU’s starting center in 1984. “I played in ’79 and ’80 and then ’83 and ’84 — I went on a mission to Mexico in between — and in those years [he played] we lost three games.”
If any mid-major program was going to break through in 1984, it was going to be LaVell Edwards’ Cougars. Edwards was BYU’s defensive coordinator before taking over in 1972 and pulling off one of the most unexpected turnarounds in college football history. BYU had never been ranked before Edwards’ hire and had won more than six games in a season just once between 1933-71. He attempted to deploy an innovative, pass-heavy offense, not because he was a devout believer in the forward pass but because, as he wrote in the American Football Coaches Association’s Football Coaching Bible, “In a situation like that, you have to think outside of the box a little and be more creative than usual. My concern was not whether I would be fired, but when. That had been the pattern for many years. I figured that because I probably wasn’t going to make it anyway, I might as well try something radically different. I decided to throw the football, not just the normal 10 or 15 times a game, but 35 to 45 times per game, on any down, from our own end zone to the opponent’s end zone.”
BYU went 25-19-1 in his first four seasons — definitive progress — then took things to a different level. Gifford Nielsen threw for 3,192 yards in 1976, and by 1979 Marc Wilson was throwing for 3,720 yards. In 1980, future NFL star Jim McMahon topped Wilson with 4,571 yards and 47 TDs. He was succeeded by future NFL hall-of-famer Steve Young. All the while, the win totals kept improving. BYU won nine games each year from 1976-78, then went a combined 34-4 with three consecutive top-15 finishes from 1979-81. After an 8-4 glitch in 1982, they surged again, beating UCLA and Missouri on the way to an 11-1 record and No. 7 finish in the AP poll.
“You play football, and you win,” Matich said. “That was it. Losing was a tremendous shock.”
Still, the Cougars were expected to take a step backwards in 1984. They began the season unranked after losing Young, star receiver Gordon Hudson and first-round linebacker Todd Shell, among others. Robbie Bosco was slipping on Young’s enormous shoes at QB, but the offensive line and defense still had depth and experience. “From a defensive standpoint, we thought, ‘We really gotta hold up our end of the bargain,'” said Jim Herrmann, defensive end and co-captain. “But we had [linebacker] Leon White, who went to the NFL. We had Kurt Gouveia, who had an all-pro career and was one of the great linebackers in BYU history. We had Kyle Morrell, an All-American safety. We had some really quality players, and we felt like we were gonna be instrumental to our success.”
“The staple was really our offensive line,” Bosco said of a veteran unit led by four seniors, including Matich, all-WAC guard Craig Garrick and current NC State offensive coordinator Robert Anae. “We returned four of the five offensive linemen, and that was a huge comfort for me. I saw what those guys could do, and now they have another year under their belt, so we could be pretty good.
“We knew we were gonna be good, but my question was, how good was I gonna be?” Bosco laughed. “I just wanted to win the WAC championship. That’s what I really cared about because the previous quarterbacks all did that, and I didn’t want to be the quarterback that broke that string. I was crazy nervous in that first game.” It showed. Against No. 3 Pitt in the first game of the season, Bosco threw three bad incompletions on BYU’s first drive and said he thought about benching himself.
Bosco threw a 78-yard pick six to Pitt’s Bill Callahan as the Panthers charged ahead 14-3 in the third quarter, but BYU climbed back to within 14-12 late, and Bosco threw a picture-perfect post route to Adam Haysbert, who scored from 50 yards out with 1:37 left.
“Robbie was asleep on the bus for the first quarter, but he made it out for the second quarter, and everything turned out okay,” Matich said. “We were like, ‘We’re gonna be fine. We got your back, and you got ours.'”
A late stop gave the Cougars an upset win. They immediately jumped back to 13th in the AP poll, and some BYU players immediately began to envision even greater things.
“The night before we played Pitt,” running back and return man Vai Sikahema, a future eight-year pro, said, “we always had a team meeting without the coaches, and Craig Garrick, he’s passed now, but he was our senior team captain, and he got up in the hotel at Pitt and said, ‘Man, we win tomorrow, and we will have a straight path to the national championship.’ That’s the first time I had ever heard ‘national championship’ at BYU, and it was my fourth year. I thought, ‘Is he nuts?'”
Foge Fazio’s Panthers would suffer a run of injuries and collapse to 3-7-1, but beating the preseason No. 3 team on national television still made a huge impact. This was ESPN’s first season with a full lineup of live college football coverage following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the NCAA could not control and limit television exposure, and BYU-Pitt was the opening game. “I don’t discount the timing of that,” Sikahema said. “We opened the season with a nationally televised game, so the East Coast got to see BYU and our brand of football. I think there’s so many variables, so many factors in that season, and I think that’s one of them.”
Also instrumental: the quarterback. But it took another game before he believed he was up for the job.
“Even after that first game, I’m like, ‘Oh boy, I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’m able to do it,'” Bosco said. “It wasn’t until the following week where I felt super comfortable.”
Against Baylor in Week 2, Bosco threw for 311 yards and six scores as the Cougars romped, 47-13. And after a 38-15 win over Tulsa in week 3, BYU had already jumped to No. 6 in the AP poll.
“I think it was after either the Baylor or Tulsa game, I finally started thinking, ‘Hey, we could make a run,'” Leon White said. “Coach Edwards was definitely against that — he was the person that kept us in line and didn’t let our heads get too big.”
“Oh, this is getting interesting”
JUST THREE WEEKS into the season, the national college football landscape was growing messy. Preseason No. 1 Auburn had fallen to Miami in the Kick-Off Classic, and after the Hurricanes jumped to No. 1, they immediately fell to Michigan in Week 2. Add in BYU’s win over Pitt and two Week 3 upsets (No. 16 Washington over No. 3 Michigan and No. 12 Penn State over No. 5 Iowa), and five top-five teams had already lost. Two more would fall in Week 4, and BYU nearly added to the chaos, needing two late stops — one aided by an incredible leap from Kyle Morrell — to fend off Hawaii, 18-13, after offensive struggles and special teams disasters.
“The play of the game, or year, or century was when Kyle Morrell jumped over the center,” Norm Chow, BYU’s QBs coach and offensive play-caller in 1984, said. “That was not planned.”
Just as the defense had bailed out the offense in Hawaii, it was the offense’s turn a couple of weeks later. Wyoming gained 478 yards and led 38-33 after three quarters in Provo, but BYU matched the Cowboys score for score and got a 14-yard game-winner from Bosco to tight end David Mills with 4:16 left. Bosco threw for 484 yards and four touchdowns as the Cougars outlasted a rising Air Force team, 30-25, the next week.
From there, they shifted into fifth gear. The Cougars won their next three games — including a 48-0 romp over New Mexico — by a combined 124-12. All the while, teams around them in the polls kept losing. No. 1 Nebraska had fallen to unranked Syracuse in Week 5, followed by No. 2 Ohio State doing the same to unranked Purdue the next week. Kansas shocked No. 2 Oklahoma in Week 9, as well, then Houston did the same to No. 3 Texas in Week 11. Heading into their Holy War game at Utah on November 17, BYU was up to No. 3.
“Every time we won a game, it seemed like the teams that were just above us lost,” Bosco said. “The first time I felt like, ‘Oh, this is getting interesting,’ was probably when we went into the Utah game …”
“… We played quite well, especially defensively,” Hermann said. “Offense had some fits and starts, but it’s the Holy War, it’s the Michigan-Ohio State of the intermountain west. It was our big game, and we won.”
Bosco threw for 367 yards and three touchdowns, but three interceptions and a fumble threatened to keep Utah in the game. Leading by only three points late, Bosco found Kelly Smith for a four yard score and a 24-14 win. And then things got really interesting.
“I remember getting on the bus, and someone said, ‘Hey, South Carolina lost to Navy,'” Herrmann said.
Indeed, South Carolina, which was 9-0 and ranked a program-best No. 2 following a win over Florida State, had completely melted down, falling 38-21 to a 3-5-1 Navy team. No. 6 Oklahoma had taken down No. 1 Nebraska as well, 17-7. That meant that an LDS school from the WAC would move up to No. 1 — and in late-November, no less.
“We got named No. 1 before our final regular season game against Utah State,” Sikahema said. “That was a freakish feeling to host a game at Cougar Stadium as the No. 1 team in the country. I remember all the signs in the stands.” (Among other things, the signs included lots of Bo Diddley Tech references. “How can you rank BYU No. 1?” Today Show host Bryant Gumbel had recently said. “Who’d they play, Bo Diddley Tech?”) “Nobody expected all these other teams were gonna lose. And they had to ’cause I don’t think anybody was just gonna place us there. And it always when they had to lose, too. If some of these teams had lost earlier in the year, maybe they would’ve recovered, but they lost late in the season just at the right moment. And all of a sudden, here we were.”
After a 38-13 stroll past Utah State in the finale, BYU headed into the postseason in the top spot. While plenty of highly ranked teams were approached about a spot opposite the Cougars in the Holiday Bowl — the WAC champion was obligated to play in the December 21 game — no one signed up. BYU would play Michigan, and it was sort of the worst of both worlds: Michigan was 6-5 and unranked and would offer BYU no strength-of-schedule benefit, but Bo Schembechler’s Wolverines were also talented enough to have beaten Miami early in the year and were only 6-5 because of injuries. Quarterback Jim Harbaugh would miss the Holiday Bowl, but just about everyone else would return.
“The dominoes all fell”
CAMPAIGNING SEASON QUICKLY began. Nick Crane, the chairman of the Orange Bowl’s selection committee, told the Miami Herald that while pollsters had placed BYU in the top spot “out of desperation,” the winner of an Orange Bowl between No. 2 Oklahoma and No. 4 Washington would almost have to be No. 1. Not surprisingly, Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer agreed. “Even in the Holiday Bowl, they’re not playing a top-20 team,” he told the Herald. “I don’t know how you can say they would be No. 1 with that kind of schedule, compared to the one we’ve played.” Never mind, of course, that OU had lost to a 5-6 Kansas team. (Washington head coach Don James tried not to take the bait. “I have to be real guarded,” he joked, “because we play BYU next year in our second game.” BYU would still win that game, 31-3.)
Switzer proved to be a relentless campaigner. It didn’t earn the Sooners the No. 1 ranking, but it did earn him a unique honor: The city of Midvale, Utah, 35 miles from Provo, ended up naming a sewage treatment plant after him.
“Things were getting pretty wild out there, and people were just tearing us apart,” Bosco said. “I think it made us a better football team. It was super fun to be the team that everybody wanted to talk about, even though it was mostly in the negative way. It was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s bring it on.’ We had more media at our practices than ever before, and I did interviews with people I didn’t even know did interviews. It was a lot of fun to be a part of.”
For three quarters, the Holiday Bowl, played in front of a packed house of 61,243, was not fun at all. Bosco suffered knee ligament damage and a cracked rib after a late hit from tackle Mike Hammerstein in the first quarter. He would somehow return to the game in the second quarter, but he threw three interceptions, his receivers were suffering uncharacteristic drops, and BYU lost three fumbles as well.
“I tell you what, they were really good,” Matich said. “We never had doubt, but we knew that the challenge was huge because of the opponent and because our quarterback was hurt.” Matich also had to rein in his emotions after the illegal hit on Bosco. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry — and I’m still mad, I’m still furious at that guy, I thought it was a cheap shot, and maybe it wasn’t, but that’s how I felt.
“I made it my mission to try to return the favor to that guy. … But I was livid. It was intense, let’s put it that way. But we knew we had the players. We knew we had the mentality to pull it off.”
They also had the defense. Despite the countless miscues, the Cougars made stop after stop — for the game, they gained 483 yards to Michigan’s 202 — and trailed just 17-10 early in the fourth quarter.
“We played together the whole year,” White said. “We knew what we could do on defense, and we knew what the offense was capable of doing. They came out slow, and the turnovers definitely hurt us, but we knew at any time Robbie and the offense could explode. So we just knew that if we could keep it close, we’d have a chance.”
As with the opener in Pittsburgh, the offense eventually rewarded the faith. Glenn Kozlowski made an acrobatic touchdown catch to tie the game with 10:51 left, and after throwing one last interception midway through the quarter, Bosco drove the Cougars 83 yards and connected with Kelly Smith for a 13-yard score with 1:23 remaining. Marv Allen picked off a pass with 44 seconds left, and that was that.
Well, sort of. It was only December 21, after all. School was out, the season was over, and everyone dispersed for Christmas and waited for the Orange Bowl. And Switzer and Co. kept campaigning.
“There was just so much time for people to talk about why they shouldn’t pick us No.1,” Bosco said. “It was super hard for our players, and then you’re watching all the games, and we’re not even together to hear what happened. Everybody’s at home.”
“I had confidence because of how revered LaVell was among his peers,” Sikahema said. “With all due respect to Barry, Barry probably had a lot of enemies, and I think there may have been some folks who would have said, ‘You know, we’re gonna stick it to Barry Switzer.'”
The Cougars got a late Christmas gift, however, in the form of one last upset: Washington thumped OU 28-17 in Miami. It was enough to eliminate the Sooners from consideration but wasn’t quite dominant enough to boost Washington No. 4 to No. 1.
“I’m sleeping in a bit, and my dad comes in, he’s already read the paper and goes, ‘Robbie, you guys are No. 1.’ That’s how I found out. And then 20 minutes later our phone started ringing, and I was doing interviews, and it was super crazy.”
“Things fell into place,” Chow added. “The dominoes all fell, the [right] teams all lost.”
How good were they, really?
BYU WON A national title, and Ty Detmer won a Heisman in 1990 (his QB coach at the time: Robbie Bosco), so there was an obvious, tangible benefit to the pass-happy style Edwards adopted. But his BYU offenses — or, more specifically, the offenses of the incredible coaches he hired and gave free rein — were spectacularly influential when it comes to the evolution of football offenses as a whole. Edwards and Bill Walsh had an interactive relationship. Just look at Edwards’ coaching tree. Future Super Bowl winning head coaches Mike Holmgren (BYU QBs coach from 1982-85), Andy Reid (BYU offensive lineman and 1982 graduate assistant) and Brian Billick (BYU tight end from 1974-77, graduate assistant in 1978) all either played or coached for Edwards (or both), as did Chow, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham, among many, many others. And two of Edwards’ biggest admirers changed the sport in their own right.
“Hal [Mumme] and Mike Leach used to sit in our office just wanting to be a part of football,” Chow said. “I think Mike was a law student or something. But Hal and Mike, the things that were presented to them … all of a sudden it’s the Air Raid offense!” he laughed. “I’m looking at them and saying, ‘What the heck are you guys talking about? That’s the same crossing routes and all that business! But Hal and Mike did a great job in influencing other coaches. And that’s what life’s about. Mike was special. Every time he wrote a book, he’d send me a copy. We thought he was a different guy, but he was bright as all get out.”
The 1984 BYU team, however, also eventually impacted the sport in a different way.
By the mid-1980s, the din and debate regarding a college football playoff was already pretty loud, but those in charge of the most powerful bowls always managed to fend off the cries and hold onto their power. That became more difficult when somehow a usurper managed to storm the gates. BYU being allowed to take the national title despite winning merely a minor bowl planted seeds of discontent. The Cougars’ national title has long been cited as one of the reasons why the Bowl Alliance came together beginning in 1992. It was an attempt to assure that the season ended with a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, and while it wasn’t very good at assuring that, its successor, the Bowl Coalition, was a little better, and finally, in 1998, the Bowl Championship Series indeed gave us a year-end 1-vs-2.
Considering the discontent that emerged from the BCS, considering it was replaced by the four-team College Football Playoff in 2014, and considering said playoff was expanded to 12 teams this season — with a spot reserved for the best team from the Group of Five (the mid-major batch from which BYU emerged) — you could say that BYU’s legacy extends far beyond Provo.
“Whether you agree or don’t agree with what happened in ’84,” Herrmann said, “we have our place in history as being the catalyst, the thorn in someone’s side. And the concept behind the original Bowl Alliance and the BCS was to kind of figure out a way at the end of the year where one always had to play two. It would’ve been great to play whoever two was — either Washington or Oklahoma, depending on the poll.”
By the way, BYU would have had an excellent shot at success in a playoff, too.
“Oh gosh, I wish,” said White. “I’m so excited now for the lower-ranked teams. Now they have an opportunity to actually show how good they are. And I would have loved to have played in a playoff back then.”
Based on the originally conceived rules for the 12-team playoff — automatic bids for the top six conference champions, plus six at-large teams, with the top four seeds reserved for champs — we would have gotten the following CFP in 1984. (Note: The No. 3 team in the AP poll, Florida, was banned from the postseason.)
FIRST ROUND
12 USC (8-3, Pac-10 champ) at 5 Washington (10-1, at large)
11 Maryland (8-3, ACC champ) at 6 Nebraska (9-2, at large)
10 SMU (9-2, at large) at 7 South Carolina (10-1, at large)
9 Oklahoma State (9-2, at large) at 8 Boston College (9-2, at large)
QUARTERFINALS
Cotton Bowl: 1 BYU (12-0, WAC champ) vs. Boston College/Oklahoma State
Sugar Bowl: 4 LSU (8-2-1, SEC champ) vs. Washington/USC
Rose Bowl: 3 Ohio State (9-2, Big Ten champ) vs. Nebraska/Maryland
Orange Bowl: 2 Oklahoma (9-1-1, Big 8 champ) vs. South Carolina/SMU
Based on my estimated SP+ ratings from 1984, BYU ranked fourth overall that season, third if you don’t include Florida. Only Nebraska (which outscored opponents by an average of 36-8 in 10 wins) and Washington (which lost only to USC) ranked higher, but not by much, and with neither of those teams earning byes, BYU would have ended up the No. 2 favorite. Based again on SP+, the title odds were Nebraska 23.4%, BYU 16.6%, Washington 16.5%, Ohio State 12.0%, Oklahoma 10.4%, LSU 5.8%, Oklahoma State 5.4%, SMU 5.3%, Boston College 2.7%, South Carolina 0.8%, Maryland 0.7%, USC 0.3%. Without a single, dominant team, this would have been an absolute free-for-all. But BYU would have been as likely as anyone to emerge victorious.
“We were really good,” Matich said. “Our defensive line — low pad level, flew off the ball. Our secondary was aggressive and flying around. Our linebackers were hitting people like they had a very un-Christian point of view. Our running back, Kelly Smith, ran like a 4.3 forty, one of the fastest college football players in America. Our receivers were just phenomenal. Our offensive line was so steady, it was boring. And we were well-coached. I mean, extraordinarily well-coached.”
“There was a chip on everyone’s shoulder,” Herrmann said, “and football’s an effort sport. We had great coaches, and we always had a culture of really tough-nosed, high-effort defense.”
I tried to get Chow to compare BYU’s title team to those he was a part of in the early-2000s at USC. He deftly demurred but raved all the same. “What was so unique about that team was the comradery,” Chow said, “the friendships that they shared, that culture. It was just so unique. A lot of returned missionaries — older, more mature guys, and you’re never worried about guys going home at night or doing things they’re not supposed to be doing.
“…Bill Walsh always said culture before scheme, and I don’t think it fit any better than with that particular football team.”
BYU in 2024 and beyond
THE 2024 SEASON itself has brought quite a bit of underdog energy to the table. Eight unranked teams have beaten top-10 opponents so far this season, highlighted of course by Northern Illinois’ upset of No. 5 Notre Dame and Vanderbilt’s classic win over No. 1 Alabama.
Granted, we haven’t hit 1984-esque notes just yet. Only one team from this year’s preseason top 10 is currently unranked, and five teams from the preseason top 10 had fallen out of the polls by this point in 1984. Still, there have been surprises and wild moments, and BYU, of all teams, is once again managing to charge up the rankings and, thanks to the expanded CFP, possibly position itself for a top-four seed. The Cougars are up to 13th in the AP poll, having handed both No. 17 Kansas State and No. 21 SMU their only respective losses of the season. Neither team scored a touchdown on a Cougar defense that currently ranks 13th in points allowed per drive and ninth in yards allowed per play. BYU is 6-0, and SP+ gives the Cougars a 28% chance of finishing 11-1 or better and a 23% chance of winning the wide open Big 12.
1:20
BYU’s Kingston turns disaster into a jaw-dropping 90-yard punt return TD
BYU’s Parker Kingston initially botches the punt return, but recovers the ball and somehow runs 90 yards to the house for a touchdown vs. Kansas State.
“It’s really hard to play in Cougar Stadium when we get our crowd going,” Bosco said of what is now LaVell Edwards Stadium. “It’s loud and crazy. To see what we did against Kansas State” — BYU forced three turnovers and returned a punt for a touchdown during a six-minute, 28-0 run in a 38-9 win — “and to see what Kansas State is doing to other teams, it’s just like, whoa. It even turned our heads, like, whoa, we might be really good.”
Not too bad for a team that went just 5-7 last season.
BYU was rewarded for its patience early in Kalani Sitake’s head coaching tenure: The Cougars went 27-25 in his first four seasons, but they exploded to 21-4 in 2020-21. Just as the school was rewarded then, it appears it’s being rewarded again for weathering last year’s disappointing Big 12 debut without forcing changes.
Sikahema thinks patience was a no-brainer.
“Kalani is giving us all of it,” he said of his fellow Tongan. “He’s giving the alums, the fans, Cougar Nation, and I think even the leadership of the church, he’s giving us all we want. We want good kids. We want them to reflect the values of our faith. And we want them to just go out and beat people and win games. We’re doing all of it.”
Sitake is only the fourth BYU head coach since Edwards’ hire 53 years ago, along with Gary Crowton (2001-04) and Bronco Mendenhall (2005-15). Only Crowton coached for fewer than nine years.
“I think Coach Sitake has a similar quality [to LaVell],” Matich said. “It is so obvious that he loves his players genuinely, it’s so obvious that he is all-in to do everything possible to win, and it’s so obvious that he’s such a fierce competitor. You put all those things together, and that’s the culture of BYU today.”
You hear “culture” a lot when talking to current and former members of the program.
“I don’t think the culture of BYU will ever change,” Chow said. “So now, all of a sudden you get a couple of decent players and a schedule that breaks for you…” his imagination ran wild for a moment.
“The Big 12 is totally up for grabs,” Matich said, “and if BYU stays healthy — so they don’t have to get too far into that depth, which is still a work in progress — then they’ve got a puncher’s chance because of that defense, and because the quarterback, Jake Retzlaff, is just a flat-out baller. They’re in a very interesting position right now.”
No matter what happens over the rest of 2024, there’s no taking away 1984. Its influence, both local and national, endures. “It’s been 40 years, and a day doesn’t go by where someone doesn’t bring it up to me and talk about it,” Bosco said. “People always wanna ask about it, or they just have their comments on how amazing that was, ‘Thank you for all you did,’ stuff like that. So from that standpoint, it’s awesome, and it really did mean a lot to our school and the community.”
And just so you’ve been warned, there might be some fate involved in BYU’s 2024 run, too.
“My kids told me last night: The last time Vanderbilt beat Alabama was 1984,” Bosco said.
Can’t argue with destiny.
As we approach the one-month mark of the 2025 college football season, the state of quarterback play among the contenders (and pretenders) across the country is becoming clearer.
LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier, Penn State’s Drew Allar and Texas’ Arch Manning — all for different reasons — have followed hefty preseason hype with relatively slow starts this fall. Elsewhere, Josh Hoover (TCU), Haynes King (Georgia Tech) and Diego Pavia (Vanderbilt) are looking very much as expected, and some of the nation’s biggest offseason question marks, including Oregon’s Dante Moore and Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed, have emerged as surprise stars.
Week 4 was a big one for transfer passers as Joey Aguilar (Tennessee), Carson Beck (Miami), John Mateer (Oklahoma), Fernando Mendoza (Indiana) and Beau Pribula (Missouri) all built on impressive starts with their new programs. Meanwhile, fellow portal quarterbacks Jackson Arnold (Auburn), Devon Dampier (Utah) and Jake Retzlaff (Tulane) experienced their first stumbles in their new uniforms Saturday.
With four full weeks of college football in the books, here’s our take on the Top 25 and how early-season quarterback situations are developing across the country. — Eli Lederman
Previous ranking: 1
Freshman Julian Sayin is off to a terrific start through three games, having replaced national championship-winning quarterback Will Howard. Sayin ranks 29th nationally in QBR (77.2) and is completing almost 79% of his throws. Sayin didn’t put up big numbers in Ohio State’s season-opening 14-7 victory over then-top-ranked Texas. But he was accurate and avoided any big mistakes (sacks or turnovers), which allowed the Ohio State defense to salt away the win. In Week 2’s 70-0 victory, Sayin set a school record with 16 straight completions to begin the game. Then, in Week 3, he passed for 347 yards as the offense got rolling against Ohio in the second half after a slow start. Some big tests loom ahead, most notably on Nov. 1 against Penn State and in the regular-season finale at Michigan. But Sayin has impressed so far with his poise and precision. — Jake Trotter
Previous ranking: 3
Carson Beck has helped lead the Hurricanes to a 4-0 start following a 26-7 win over Florida on Saturday. Though his performance against the Gators was not up to his standard — Beck went 17-of-30 for 160 yards with one interception — he is still completing 73% of his passes on the season and has helped position Miami in the top five as a CFP contender. Beck has shown an ability to make big plays in the passing game with his receivers, who are skilled at going up and making acrobatic catches or coming down with jump balls. Following an open date, Miami plays Florida State in Tallahassee, and Beck said he is looking forward to playing in Doak Campbell Stadium for the first time. — Andrea Adelson
Previous ranking: 2
The Ducks continue to boast one of the most balanced offenses in the country as they totaled 305 passing yards and 280 rushing yards in their 41-7 win over rivals Oregon State Saturday. One slight difference about this week’s performance, however, was that they let quarterback Dante Moore loosen his arm a bit more. Whether it was by design or not, it worked; Moore threw 31 passes for 305 yards and four touchdowns, all season highs. It was another reminder that no matter how good the Ducks have been this season, Moore still has more in the tank. Even if he doesn’t have the kind of off-the-charts pop that others at his position might boast, the sophomore has proved he can be efficient, explosive when needed and, most importantly, capable of managing Oregon’s offense to perfection so far. — Paolo Uggetti
Previous ranking: 4
After a slow start to the season due to a torso injury, Tigers quarterback Garrett Nussmeier again looked like one of the best passers in the FBS on Saturday, albeit against FCS program Southeastern Louisiana. And with a trip to Ole Miss coming up next, it couldn’t have come at a better time for LSU. Nussmeier completed 25 of 31 passes for 273 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions in 2½ quarters of action against the Lions. It was the first game in which he threw for more than 250 yards this season. “This week was big about trying to find our rhythm and getting in stride heading into SEC play,” Nussmeier said. LSU coach Brian Kelly thought Nussmeier did a better job seeing the field and throwing in rhythm. — Mark Schlabach
Previous ranking: 7
Veteran Drew Allar is off to a bit of a slow start statistically. He ranks 111th in QBR (38.4) and has thrown just four touchdowns over three games. But the Nittany Lions have yet to be pressed, as they coasted past Nevada (46-11), Florida International (34-0) and Villanova (52-6). The spotlight, however, will be on Allar and Penn State next weekend when Oregon visits for a prime-time, “White Out” showdown. Allar admitted over the summer that the time has come for the Nittany Lions “to get over that hump” against big-time opponents. Under coach James Franklin, Penn State is 4-20 against teams ranked in the AP top 10 — and Allar has only one career top-10 win (Boise State last year) as Penn State’s starting quarterback. Beating the Ducks this time around would be a huge statement for Allar and the Nittany Lions. — Trotter
Previous ranking: 5
Any lingering quarterback concerns that Georgia fans had about Gunner Stockton were probably put to rest after his performance in a 44-41 overtime victory at Tennessee on Sept. 13. The sophomore completed 23 of 31 passes for 304 yards with two touchdowns and ran 13 times for 38 yards with another score. It was a much better performance for Stockton, who struggled to get the ball down the field in a 28-6 victory against Austin Peay the week before. He led the Bulldogs on four touchdown drives of 72 yards or longer, including one near the end of regulation that resulted in his 28-yard scoring pass to London Humphreys on fourth down. Georgia’s offensive line needs to get better, and Stockton needs to improve at keeping his eyes down the field while scrambling. — Schlabach
Previous ranking: 8
So far, things could not have gone better for the Seminoles with transfer quarterback Tommy Castellanos, who has been a perfect fit for the offense and the team in general. Castellanos has thrown for 594 yards and three touchdowns this season, completing 71% of his passes, while adding 139 yards rushing and three scores. Florida State has not had to rely on the passing game just yet, as the Seminoles have steamrolled their opponents on the ground. Castellanos did have a bit of a scare in a 66-10 win over Kent State when his leg got rolled up on, but he said afterward he was “all good.” — Adelson
Previous ranking: 9
Washington State transfer John Mateer has delivered on the hype that followed his offseason arrival in Norman. Through four games, he has already taken care of his principal objective: stabilizing a Sooners offense that finished 113th in total offense a year ago. But Mateer has also brought with him a brand of playmaking ability Oklahoma hasn’t had at the quarterback position since Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts rolled through the program in the late 2010s. Following Saturday’s 24-17 win over then-No. 22 Auburn, Mateer ranks sixth nationally in passing yards (1,215) and tied for second among Power 4 quarterbacks in rushing scores (five). He was far from perfect facing an SEC defense for the first time, and Mateer’s turnover tally (four) and propensity for working himself into trouble are worth keeping an eye on as Oklahoma stares down ranked matchups in six of its final eight games of the season. But there’s no doubt that Mateer has significantly raised the floor for the Sooners’ offense. The question now is just how high the ceiling can be this fall. — Lederman
Previous ranking: 6
The Aggies had a bye week, a fortuitous break after an emotional trip to Notre Dame where they won on a fourth-down touchdown with 13 seconds left. It was A&M’s first road nonconference win against a ranked team since 1979 and first road win against any ranked team at all since 2014. Marcel Reed was just 17-of-37 in that game but threw for 360 yards, and KC Concepcion and Mario Craver have provided the 3-0 Aggies with the big-play threats they lacked last season. Last year, A&M got off to a hot start, beginning 7-1, including a win over No. 8 LSU. Then, a slide started, beginning with a road loss to South Carolina followed by a 43-41 triple-overtime loss to Auburn. The Aggies get the Tigers at home next week, who are coming off a road loss to Oklahoma, to try to keep this year’s momentum rolling. — Dave Wilson
Previous ranking: 20
Although Indiana retained many of its top players from its 2024 CFP team, it needed to replace standout quarterback Kurtis Rourke. The team plucked one of the top available transfers in Cal‘s Fernando Mendoza, who joined his younger brother and fellow quarterback Alberto Mendoza at IU. How would Mendoza adjust? The answer came Saturday with a near-flawless performance, as Mendoza had three more touchdown passes (five) than incompletions (two), finishing with 267 passing yards and finding four different teammates for scores. He became the second FBS player with five passing touchdowns and 90% completions against an AP ranked opponent in the past 30 years, joining Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud in 2021 against Michigan State. Mendoza could end up being an upgrade from Rourke. — Adam Rittenberg
Previous ranking: 12
After four games, Rebels coach Lane Kiffin has a good problem on his hands. Ole Miss has two quarterbacks who are more than capable of running the offense. Starter Austin Simmons won the job in camp and has thrown for 580 yards with four touchdowns and four interceptions. Simmons injured his ankle in the fourth quarter of a 30-23 win at Kentucky on Sept. 6, and backup Trinidad Chambliss has played even better in his absence. In Saturday’s 45-10 rout of Tulane, Chambliss passed for 307 yards with two touchdowns and ran for 112 yards on 14 attempts. In the past two wins over Arkansas and Tulane, Chambliss threw for 660 yards with three touchdown passes and no interceptions, while running for 174 with two scores. With LSU going to Oxford, Mississippi, next week, Kiffin faces a difficult decision. “I’m not saying he’s Russell Wilson, don’t get me wrong, but there’s some similarities in that kind of in the ‘it factor’ and how he moves and holds himself, you know, that I’ve kind of said that since he’s gotten here,” Kiffin said of Chambliss, who won two Division II national championships at Ferris State in Big Rapids, Michigan. — Schlabach
Previous ranking: 17
Behren Morton took some rough hits on Saturday, including a hit to the head that knocked him out of the Red Raiders’ road test at Utah. But Texas Tech did not miss a beat when backup Will Hammond stepped in to replace him. The redshirt freshman threw for 169 yards, rushed for 61 yards and led a 21-0 scoring run in the fourth quarter for a massive 34-10 victory against then No. 16 Utah. Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said Morton will be fine, and a bye week is arriving at a good time for this team. But Hammond, who put up the second-best QBR (96.3) in FBS during Week 4, has done more than enough to prove he’s ready to help this team win if called upon. — Max Olson
Previous ranking: 10
A tuneup against 0-4 Sam Houston might have been what the doctor ordered for several scuffling Longhorns who had yet to find their stride this season. Arch Manning accounted for five touchdowns — three passing and two rushing — and completed 14 passes in a row a week after the Longhorns’ offense got booed after 10 straight incompletions against UTEP. Saturday, Manning finished 18-of-21 for 309 yards, including two touchdown passes of 53 and 13 yards to Ryan Wingo, who had just nine catches and one touchdown in the first three games, and edge rushing star Colin Simmons recorded his first solo sack of the year. The Longhorns head to Florida on Saturday hoping to keep building momentum in their SEC opener against the 1-3 Gators before facing Oklahoma, which beat Auburn to move to 4-0, in Dallas the following week. — Wilson
Previous ranking: 16
Joey Aguilar and Tennessee faced a unique test this week, needing to get back on track after a devastating loss to Georgia last week. Safe to say, they passed it. Aguilar threw for 218 yards and three touchdowns and needed to play only one drive in the second half as the Vols broke out to a 42-7 halftime lead and cruised 56-24 over UAB. The Vols are averaging 53.5 points per game through four games, and Aguilar has 1,124 passing yards and 12 touchdowns. They have an explosiveness that they lacked with Nico Iamaleava at quarterback last season, and the defense has been fine against teams not named Georgia. Starting next week at Mississippi State, however, the Vols embark on a run of three road trips in four games. We’ll see if Aguilar’s solid early form travels. — Bill Connelly
Previous ranking: 13
The Cyclones were idle this week ahead of next week’s home game against surging Arizona. At 4-0, Iowa State is off to a promising start, but it has to turn in a comprehensive win against an FBS opponent as all three such wins have come by one score. Quarterback Rocco Becht is finding a way to help pull these games out, but Iowa State needs more explosive plays from its offense if it expects to seriously compete for the Big 12 title. — Kyle Bonagura
Previous ranking: 15
Ty Simpson had to wait years to win Alabama’s starting job, and his tenure began as inauspiciously as possible with a dire loss at Florida State. Simpson has been almost perfect since, however, completing 41 of 46 passes for 608 yards and seven TDs against UL Monroe and Wisconsin. The Tide rolled in both games, setting the table nicely for an enormous and potentially season-defining trip to Georgia next Saturday. If Simpson looks good in a Tide win, he enters the Heisman discussion and Alabama’s CFP bona fides get a nice boost. If he struggles and Bama loses, the CFP starts to seem like a pipe dream. — Connelly
Previous ranking: 19
Beau Pribula has had it pretty easy early in his tenure as Mizzou’s starting quarterback. He has completed 72% of his passes with an 8-to-2 INT-to-TD ratio, he has been a solid scrambling weapon at times, and he has been able to turn around and hand the ball off to Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts. They’ve taken it from there. The running back duo rushed 35 times for 214 yards and two touchdowns in Mizzou’s 29-20 win over South Carolina on Saturday night. Despite missing left tackle Cayden Green, Mizzou had 285 yards rushing, Pribula took only one sack and Mizzou went 7-for-13 on third downs. Only some third-down brilliance from the Gamecocks’ LaNorris Sellers kept this one competitive, but the Tigers moved to 4-0 by finishing the game on an 11-0 run. With a buy game against UMass and a bye week coming up, it looks like Pribula will lead an unbeaten team against Alabama in Columbia in a couple of weeks. — Connelly
Previous ranking: 18
Saturday’s win over Temple wasn’t exactly pretty, but then again, things rarely are for the Yellow Jackets. QB Haynes King likes it that way. Few quarterbacks in the country have proved their toughness more than King, who added three touchdowns in Week 4’s 45-24 win over the Owls. King’s ability to make plays with his legs is what sets him apart, but he has also been stellar as a passer — a big question coming off last season’s shoulder injury. Georgia Tech’s next two games are against Wake Forest and Virginia Tech — two of the ACC’s bottom-feeders — meaning he’ll have a shot to pad his stat line even more before a showdown at Duke on Oct. 18. — David Hale
Previous ranking: 21
Freshman phenom Bryce Underwood earned his first Big Ten road victory on Saturday with a 30-27 win at Nebraska. He didn’t put up crazy stats on the day — 105 passing yards, 61 rushing yards, one TD — but didn’t need to while the Wolverines’ run game overwhelmed a top-10 scoring defense with 292 rushing yards on 9.1 yards per carry (excluding sacks). Interim coach Biff Poggi loved the poise Underwood brought to the sideline and huddle that gave his team no doubt it’d win. The young QB’s developmental trajectory through four games remains extremely exciting to watch. — Olson
Previous ranking: 22
Diego Pavia fought for an extra year of eligibility in 2025 and is absolutely making the most of it. The sixth-year senior avenged last year’s upset loss to Georgia State with a 70-21 rout on Saturday night that has Vanderbilt off to a 4-0 start for the first time since 2008. Pavia has dramatically raised his completion percentage from 59.4% last season to an SEC-best 73.9%, ranks among the top 10 in QBR (85.7) and is powering a top-10 scoring offense that’s putting up 47.5 points per game. The Commodores have one more nonconference tuneup against Utah State before an epic October schedule against four of the SEC’s best in Alabama, LSU, Missouri and Texas. — Olson
Previous ranking: 25
The Horned Frogs played a bit sloppy but never panicked against SMU in a 35-24 win, the last iteration of a rivalry that dates back to 2015. Josh Hoover threw for 379 yards and a career-high five touchdowns, and a stacked receiving room saw Eric McAlister become this week’s star, with eight catches for 254 yards (second best in school history) and three touchdowns, narrowly missing two more, one on an interception that was wrestled away from him and another on a possible TD catch that was ruled incomplete and wasn’t reviewed by officials. The defense held SMU to 384 yards, 4-of-13 on third down and the Mustangs’ fewest points all season. The Frogs, who snuck into the AP Top 25 at No. 24 this week, head to Tempe to take on defending Big 12 champs Arizona State on Friday night, a test that could start to reveal if TCU is back on its 2022 trajectory. — Wilson
Previous ranking: NR
If there wasn’t much talk about Jayden Maiava‘s season so far, then let the chatter begin. The Trojans’ quarterback was impressive against Michigan State in a 45-31 win, looking as comfortable as ever in Lincoln Riley’s offense. Maiva completed 20 of 26 passes for 234 yards (and crossed the 1,000-yard mark for the season) while adding three passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns too. It’s not clear yet just how good USC is and can be in the Big Ten and beyond this season, but through four contests, there’s no doubt that the explosive offense the sport has come to expect when Riley has a dynamic quarterback in tow is alive and well with Maiava under center. In fact, after putting up 517 yards of offense against the Spartans, the Trojans’ average yards per game for the year (604 per game, tops in the country) will go down. At the center of it all has been Maiava. — Uggetti
Previous ranking: 24
When the season opened, the biggest question looming over Notre Dame was at quarterback. It took until late in fall camp before CJ Carr won the job, and the Irish — fresh off a trip to the national championship game — might’ve reasonably been concerned about putting their fate in the hands of a QB with no starting experience. Turns out, Carr has been fine — throwing for 223 yards and two touchdowns in a 56-30 win over Purdue on Saturday — and Notre Dame’s Achilles’ heel has been the area the Irish might’ve felt best about: the secondary. Purdue threw for 303 yards and three touchdowns Saturday, and the battered and struggling defensive backs in South Bend showed little ability to adjust. Notre Dame might have its QB1, but the job now is stopping the other team’s quarterback. — Hale
Previous ranking: 11
When the Illini slogged through the first half Sept. 6 against Duke, struggling along the line of scrimmage, quarterback Luke Altmyer kept the team on track, avoiding major mistakes and buying enough time for a second-half surge. But Altmyer had no chance to be a hero at Indiana, which swarmed him all night, recording five sacks in the first half and seven in the game. Other than a 59-yard touchdown pass to Collin Dixon, Altmyer was limited to 87 passing yards on 13 completions and constantly faced pressure. He certainly can play better and will need to beginning this week against USC. But Altmyer was far from Illinois’ biggest problem in the Indiana debacle. He has given the Illini a veteran presence who, when given time, can pick apart defenses. — Rittenberg
Previous ranking: 14
The celebration in Utah about a revived Utes offense was premature, it turns out. Utah and Texas Tech were locked in a defensive tussle for much of Saturday’s 34-10 Texas Tech win before the Red Raiders finished the game with a flurry of touchdowns in the fourth quarter. The Utes struggled in both phases on offense, managing just 101 yards rushing on 31 carries (3.3 yards per carry) and only 162 yards through the air. The ineffectiveness of the offense was compounded by four turnovers that served as an unpleasant reminder of the past two seasons. — Bonagura
-
Alyssa Roenigk
LITTLE FALLS, N.J. — Yogi would have loved this.
Hundreds of people, young, old and wearing matching commemorative T-shirts, just finished dancing the “YMCA” on the field at Yogi Berra Stadium at Montclair State University. Little League teams, former MLB players and local politicians laugh and clutch their gloves as volunteers hand out souvenir baseballs. Yankees organist Ed Alstrom plays “Charge!” from a stage in center field, and the crowd responds on cue.
“Yogi loved bringing people together,” says Yankees great Willie Randolph, who played for Berra from 1976 to 1988 and later coached the Yankees and managed the Mets. “He made everyone feel like they’re family. He would have been ecstatic. I think he’s looking down on this field and is so proud.”
They have all come here on a Sunday afternoon, from as far away as California and Florida, to celebrate a man who treated every interaction much like a game of catch. Berra cared as much about what he tossed into a conversation as how he received what was thrown his way. So, what better way to honor him than by playing the biggest game of catch? Ever.
The current record is 972 pairs, set eight years ago in Illinois. On its face, breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest game of catch sounds simple: Gather a couple thousand people, pair them up and ask them to toss baseballs back and forth for five minutes. Doing it, however, is anything but easy.
When Eve Schaenen, the executive director of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center at Montclair State, approached Guinness with the idea, adjudicator Michael Empric, who is overseeing the day’s process, told her that many mass-attendance record attempts fail.
“That’s part of why we wanted to do this,” Schaenen says. “There are stakes. Yogi played a game where you could strike out. You could lose. That doesn’t mean you don’t try. He was told he couldn’t so many times and look at what remarkable things he did with his life.”
Berra was born 100 years ago and died before many of the kids gathered here were born. He made his MLB debut in 1946, retired as a player in 1965 and stopped coaching in 1989. Yet, everyone here on this day has a story about a time they were touched by his life. Berra connected deeply with people. It didn’t matter if he was talking to a teammate, a waiter, the president or his postman. With Berra, everyone got the same guy.
That this record attempt is taking place one day before the anniversary of his death (and his MLB debut) on Sept. 22 might have elicited him to create one of his popular Yogi-isms. “Well,” he might have said, “we’re a day early, but right on time.”
TO BASEBALL FANS, Yogi Berra is a legend. An MLB Hall of Famer. A man who played in 75 World Series games and won 10 rings — both records unlikely to be broken — and was one of the best “bad ball” hitters in history. The image of Berra leaping into the arms of Yankees pitcher Don Larsen after calling the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956 is indelible in the minds of baseball fans.
“All Yankees fans are Yogi fans,” says Paul Semendinger, a retired principal and adjunct professor at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey. He is wearing a replica 1939 Lou Gehrig Yankees jersey. “But you can be a Yogi fan without being a Yankees fan.”
Case in point: Semendinger, 57, is here with his 26-year-old son, Ethan, and 87-year-old dad, Paul Sr., “the world’s biggest Ted Williams fan.” (Paul Sr. is wearing a Red Sox jersey.) “You could root for Yogi even if you’re not a fan of his team,” Paul Sr. says, “because he was a good person.”
Semendinger and his son run a Yankees blog and play on a softball team together. He and his dad still meet up a few times a year to play catch in the backyard. “For 87, he still throws a pretty good knuckleball,” Semendinger says.
When Josh Rawitch, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, was 10, he sent Berra a baseball card from his home in Los Angeles and asked him to sign it. “It came back with his signature in this perfect penmanship,” Rawitch says. “I was a big fan of baseball history and although I was a Dodgers fan, he was Yogi Berra.” Over the years, Rawitch met Berra multiple times and became a fan of him as a man. “For someone with 10 rings, he never took himself too seriously,” he says. “He had such humility.”
Rawitch is here to display Berra’s Hall of Fame plaque, which a museum employee drove nearly 200 miles from Cooperstown, New York, to Little Falls on Saturday. It’s the first time the plaque has left the Hall since Berra was inducted in 1972.
“It’s rare that we do this,” Rawitch says. “But we knew we wanted to be a part of something so special.”
Anthony “Uncle Tony” Stinger turned 90 this year. He was in the right-field grandstands at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 22, 1946, when Berra made his MLB debut. “It was a Sunday, the second game of a doubleheader against Philadelphia,” Stinger says. “I took the 4 train from Harlem to the stadium, and the Yankees called Yogi up that day. He could hit anything, even a ball a foot off the ground. They didn’t know how to pitch to him.”
Stinger has lived in the Bronx for 53 years and came here with his nieces. Although he’s only spectating, he says he wouldn’t have missed this event for the world. “Yogi would be amazed,” he says, looking around the stadium.
TO MANY, BERRA was a war hero. The St. Louis native signed with the Yankees in 1943 but delayed his MLB career to enlist in the Navy on his 18th birthday and served as a gunner’s mate in World War II. He provided cover from a rocket boat for the troops who landed on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. He was wounded by enemy fire and earned a Purple Heart, although he famously never received the medal because he didn’t fill out the paperwork. He didn’t want his mother to worry.
Daniel Joseph Clair joined the Marines in 1966 and earned a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam. He’s here to play catch with his wife, a lifelong Yankees fan. “I met Yogi outside the stadium once,” Clair says. “He took the time to talk to me before he got on the bus.”
To many of the players he coached, Berra was a lifetime friend and confidant.
“I’m getting goose bumps talking about him,” Randolph says, rubbing his arms. “Some of my best memories as a young manager are sitting in my office before games and talking baseball with Yogi. When I think about being the first African American manager in New York history, which I am very proud of, Yogi was very instrumental in that. He taught me so much. I miss him every day.”
Two months after his death, Berra was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for his military service as well as his civil rights and educational activism, although he would balk at being called an activist. He would say he was just treating people equally, as he would want to be treated.
Berra grew up on The Hill, a heavily Italian area of St. Louis, and later faced prejudice and ridicule for being Italian and not looking like a typical ballplayer. Throughout his life, whether by crossing racial lines or through his work with Athlete Ally on LGBTQ equality — an organization he joined in his 80s — he wasn’t trying to set an example, yet time and again, he did.
Berra befriended Jackie Robinson in 1946 when they played on opposing teams in the International League. The next year, Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier. Before games, Berra would walk across the field at Yankee Stadium to find Robinson and chat with his friend. “I don’t think he was doing it to make a statement, but 60,000 people saw him talking to Jackie,” Berra’s eldest granddaughter, Lindsay Berra, says. “This was 18 years before the Civil Rights Act. He was making a comment, whether he knew it or not.”
When Elston Howard became the Yankees’ first Black player in 1955, Berra began grooming him as his replacement behind the plate. During spring training in segregated Florida, Howard couldn’t ride on the same bus, eat in the same restaurants or stay in the same hotels as his white teammates. So, Berra often joined him at his.
TO PEOPLE WHO never watched baseball, Berra was a cultural phenomenon, a “Jeopardy!” answer, a man they quoted sometimes without knowing who they were quoting.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
You can observe a lot by watching.
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
Berra was the personification of a cartoon bear, a Yoo-hoo pitchman and, as Wynton Marsalis once said while touring the museum, “the Thelonious Monk of baseball.” He was world famous and as recognizable as any figure in sports, yet he was also the guy his three sons would find downstairs in the mornings having coffee with the postman, garbage man and a few of Montclair’s finest.
Tommy Corizzi is too young to have seen Berra play or coach. In fact, he was born just one year before Berra died. He’s here with his “pop pop,” Tom Corizzi, who loved the idea of spending a Sunday afternoon connecting with his grandson and his favorite team. “Yogi was cool,” Tommy, 11, says. “I want to be in the world record book with him.”
Thirteen-year-old Jake Esarey Elmgart is here with his baseball team. He donated the $2,500 he raised for his bar mitzvah project to this event to help pay for kids with special needs to attend.
Just last week, a local woman handed Lindsay a letter she said she found in a drawer recently. The woman’s son, now in his 30s, wrote the letter to Berra in 2000 — 35 years after he retired — but never sent it. “You were in your car and while you were driving, you pointed at me and put your thumb up,” Justin LaMarca, then 8, wrote in pencil and in cursive. “I yelled to you and said you are my favorite player in the world.”
TO ME, BERRA was my best friend’s grandpa.
I met Lindsay in 2002 when I joined the staff at ESPN The Magazine in New York City, where she worked at the time. We became fast friends. Her family became mine in the way that happens when you live far from your own. Grammy Carmen was chic and sentimental. Grampa Yogi was funny and grumpy and warm and honest, and I think of them every Christmas when I hang the oversized red ceramic ornament they bought for me at New York’s 21 Club. Or at Halloween, because they always answered the door for trick-or-treaters in the same costumes: Grammy Carmen as an adorable witch and Grampa Yogi as Yogi Berra.
A half hour before the record attempt, I’m standing outside the museum with my dad, Fred. We came here in May 2012 to celebrate Berra’s 87th birthday. We toured the museum and watched the Yankees beat the Mariners from a party suite at Yankee Stadium. My dad remembers watching Grampa Yogi interact with fans and former players, singing him “Happy Birthday” and eating pieces of a pinstriped cake.
The previous night, my dad watched a few innings of a game with him in Berra’s living room. “Here’s your chance to ask him anything,” I told him.
My dad was 12 when Berra retired as a player. He grew up on a Belgian horse farm outside of Pittsburgh and never had the chance to see him play in person. He had few opportunities to watch him play on TV because the networks carried only local games back then, plus the Game of the Week on Saturdays. He does, however, remember watching the Pirates beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. “I was 7,” he says. “I’m not sure if I remember it as much as I remember the photo of Yogi standing in left field watching Bill Mazeroski’s homer go over the fence. That’s an iconic Pittsburgh picture.”
At the top of the ninth inning in that shocking game (if you’re a Yankees fan), Berra hit a grounder to tie the score 9-9. Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Mazeroski hit a walk-off homer to seal the series for the Pirates. “Yogi said the worst day of his life was watching the ball go over the fence at Forbes Field,” my dad says. (I did tell him to ask the man anything.) “Imagine all he’d experienced in his life, and he said that was his worst day.”
Grampa Yogi died three years after that visit. That weekend was one of many times I watched my best friend share her grandpa with the world. Lindsay had watched her grandmother do so graciously throughout her life, listening with care as people told her how much they loved her husband. But Lindsay didn’t understand how people who had met her grandfather for only a moment, if at all, could feel the same kind of love toward him that she did. After his death, as tributes poured in from around the world, she realized that though their love might not be the same as hers, it is just as real. And it is flowing through this stadium now.
I’M STANDING ON the field precisely 3 meters across from my dad, a baseball glove on my left hand. My dad tosses a baseball my way. I catch it and look around. Baseballs are flying everywhere. People are laughing and dancing and dropping balls. We’re all singing along to John Fogerty’s “Centerfield.”
There’s a mystical quality to the relationship that develops between the two people on either end of a game of catch, and it’s happening for all of us now. Maybe it’s how attuned we’ve become to each other, to subtle shifts in our partner’s body position and the message those movements communicate. I’m ready. Send it my way. Maybe it’s the meditative rhythm of the back-and-forth and how quickly the world narrows to the space between us. Or maybe it’s as simple as the eye contact and focus the act requires.
My dad doesn’t remember the first time we played catch together. I don’t, either. But being here on this day, tossing a baseball methodically with him, I’m transported to a Little League field in Cape Coral, Florida. I am 11, wearing an oversized blue Expos jersey and stirrup socks, and warming up with him before a playoff game. The last time we played catch, I was likely in high school and playing shortstop for the CCHS Seahawks.
Lindsay is playing catch with her boyfriend, Peter, surrounded by her family. She remembers the first time she played catch with her grandpa. “My earliest memories are playing wiffle ball in the front yard at holidays,” she says. “Uncle Dale had broken a window at a neighbor’s house, so we played with something safer.” The real baseballs came out when her grandfather was asked to throw out a first pitch. “He’d call each of the grandkids until someone was available to come up to the house and play catch with him,” Lindsay says. “He didn’t want to embarrass himself on the mound.”
When Berra’s boys were young, he was coaching and away from home during baseball season, so they never had the chance to play catch with their dad. Dale says that while Berra loved to toss the football or shoot baskets with him and his brothers, he believes his dad never wanted them to feel pressure to play baseball. “When I signed with the Mets in 1972, I warmed up with him during spring training,” Larry says. “That’s the only memory I have of playing catch with my dad. But I feel him today.”
Larry is playing catch with his son, Andrew. While Empric watches from the stage, volunteers walk the neatly spaced rows of participants looking for rule breakers: people who are on their phones, rolling the ball rather than throwing it or too young to meet the cutoff (age 7). When the five-minute clock runs out, everyone hoots and cheers and high-fives.
“If Dad were here, he’d probably ask, ‘Why would all these people do this? They don’t have to be here,'” Larry says. “He never understood the impact he had on people just by saying hello, by waving, by inviting them in for coffee. He always said, ‘I just played baseball.’ He never understood the aura he created.”
After several excruciating minutes, Empric walks to the podium to deliver the result. “I can now announce that today … in Little Falls … New Jersey … USA … you had a total of … 1,179 pairs,” he says, and hands Schaenen an oversized plaque, which she thrusts into the air. The crowd erupts. “It’s a new Guinness World Record,” Empric says. “Congratulations! You are officially amazing.”
For a while, no one moves. For nearly an hour, many people stay on the field and soak up the magic flowing between the baselines. Some continue to play catch, others chat with the people they stood next to during the attempt. This is what today was all about. Yogi was many things to many people, and today, he brought us all together.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment12 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024