COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’86 : HE’S TRYING TO PASS ON A TRADITION : As Top BYU Quarterback, Steve Lindsley Will Have His Work Cut Out for Him

The great quarterback tradition at Brigham Young University has never seen anyone quite like Steve Lindsley. That’s not necessarily bad, just different, and this season does figure to be different around Provo, Utah, where uncertainty at quarterback comes so rarely that this will qualify as a controversy of sorts.

Then again, the great quarterback tradition at BYU has rarely seen a season like this.

Lindsley, a 6-foot, 185-pound senior from Salt Lake City, heads into Saturday’s season opener against Utah State having thrown just three passes in his college career, which put him three ahead of the other candidates for the starting spot. He won out over one player (junior Mike Young) who gets plenty of attention because of the brother who preceded him at the school, another player (sophomore Bob Jensen) who is said to have the strongest arm of all but who skipped a couple practices recently and considered transferring, and a third player (sophomore Sean Covey) who is best known as the subject of a Sports Illustrated story on BYU football missionaries and has since redshirted.

“There’s a lot of excitement around here with the quarterback situation,” Young said recently. “Before, everyone wondered how good the guy was going to be. Now, they just wonder who he is going to be. I must get asked that question about 20 times a day.”

Now that the job has been given to Lindsley, the answer is an unpleasant one for Young.

Thus, 1 1/2 months shy of his 25th birthday, Lindsley will become the first returned Mormon missionary, the first walk-on and the first senior-year-only starter at quarterback for Coach LaVell Edwards, now in his 15th season. The latter is a result of having seniors as the No. 1 (Robbie Bosco) and No. 2 (Blaine Fowler) quarterbacks last year and, presuming Lindsley sees all the action in 1986, means the Cougars could be put in the same spot next season with Young.

Does it also mean that BYU’s streak of leading the nation in passing and total offense, as it has for the past three years, will continue?

Depends on whom you talk to.

Lindsley: “That’s our goal. We talk about it every time we meet. We talk about leading the nation in passing and total offense and winning the WAC championship, and most of the time we do it.”

Edwards: “That’s not a big consideration. All we want to do is win the conference, and what ever else happens is just icing on the cake.”

The assistant coach in charge of quarterbacks, Norm Chow: “I hope so. But we lost to UCLA, Texas El Paso and Ohio State last year, and the way they beat us, I think, was by dropping back and looking for the pass. We’re ready to do whatever it takes to win.”

Covey: “The feeling I get among the coaches and players is that the passing game is as good as it’s ever been. I’m sure everyone said the same thing (about lack of experience) when Bosco stepped in his junior year. We had (Steve) Young, we had (Jim) McMahon, we had (Marc) Wilson and here’s this guy no one ever heard of. He went on to have a great year, and I think the same thing is going to happen this season.”

And what of the expectations?

“I just tell people from the start, ‘Hey, I’m not going to break McMahon’s career records because I don’t have his kind of time,’ ” said Lindsley, a former second-team junior college All-American at Ricks College in Idaho, which also makes him the first JC transfer to start at quarterback for Edwards since Gary Sheide in 1974. “But I do think I’m the type of quarterback who can step in and do the job without breaking stride.

“I remember when Robbie Bosco came back for his senior year after winning the national championship and it was like, ‘I have to throw for 500 yards and 6 touchdowns every game or people are going to be disappointed.’ He had all that pressure. I don’t have much, but there is still some pressure on anyone who is the starting quarterback at BYU.

“What I want to do is be a puppet in their (the coaches’) hands. I just want to accomplish the team goals, and that is to win games.”

A puppet?

“Well, I don’t have the experience of a Robbie Bosco for my senior year, but I’ve surrounded myself with two All-Americans (wide receiver Mark Bellini and tight end Trevor Molini) and one potential All-American (fullback Lakei Heimuli) with me on offense. My job is to get the ball to them and let them do their thing. That takes the pressure off me.”

Instead, any pressure may come from knowing that a line has already formed--Young, coming off a very good spring, followed by Jensen--to replace Lindsley should he falter. Not being a Heisman Trophy candidate has its down side, too.

Young, recruited to BYU by former Cougar offensive coordinator Ted Tollner, now the head coach at USC, is considered the best all-around athlete of the four. His problem has been putting that to use.

He returned two years ago from his mission to Honduras 20 pounds lighter and with barely enough strength to get through two-a-day workouts as late as last fall. The problem was finally traced to a parasite he picked up in Honduras that went undetected for a year. Then, after 1985 recruit Kevin Smith transferred out of the logjam and to the University of Oregon, Young volunteered for junior varsity duty to get more experience, completed 25 of 48 passes for 404 yards against Air Force in his first game . . . and broke his collarbone the next week.

“I waited a long time for this turn,” he said. “When I first came in, there were five guys ahead of me. I can see why Kevin Smith transferred; he might have made the smartest move. We have 9 or 10 quarterbacks on the team this year, so that had some people discouraged.”

Actually, Edwards said, there were six on the roster at the start of the year. Now, however, there is only one on top.

BYU QUARTERBACKS SINCE 1973 Starting with Gary Sheide in 1973, BYU quarterbacks have ranked among the top 10 passers nationally 12 of the last 13 seasons. The season (1978) that BYU did not have a passer ranked in the top 10, the quarterback duties were shared by Jim McMahon and Marc Wilson.

Year Player G Cmp Att Int Pct Yds TD Pass NCAA Eff. Rank 1973 Gary Sheide 10 177 294 12 .602 2350 22 143.8 2nd 1974 Gary Sheide 11 181 300 19 .603 2174 23 133.8 2nd 1975 Gifford Nielsen 9 110 180 7 .611 1471 10 140.3 10th 1976 Gifford Nielsen 11 207 372 19 .556 3192 29 143.2 4th 1977 Marc Wilson 11 164 277 18 .592 2418 24 148.1 8th 1978 Marc Wilson 10 121 233 13 .519 1499 8 106.1 NR 1978 Jim McMahon 10 87 176 8 .494 1307 6 113.9 NR 1979 Marc Wilson 11 250 427 15 .585 3720 29 147.1 4th 1980 Jim McMahon 12 284 445 18 .638 4571 47 176.9 1st 1981 Jim McMahon 10 272 423 7 .643 3555 30 155.0 1st 1982 Steve Young 11 230 367 18 .627 3100 18 140.0 6th 1983 Steve Young 11 306 429 10 .713 3902 33 168.4 1st 1984 Robbie Bosco 12 283 458 11 .618 3875 33 151.8 2nd 1985 Robbie Bosco 13 338 511 24 .661 4273 30 146.4 7th