At BYU, Now They Boo-Who? : Quarterback Factory Is Put on Defensive, but It Still Can Win

Boos at BYU? It’s true. Brigham Young won the mythical national title in 1984, but now its fans are saying, “How many points have you scored for me lately?”

Not many, and there’s the problem. This used to be Quarterback U., but this year’s quarterback, Steve Lindsley, isn’t exactly earning a passing grade (only 12 touchdown passes compared to 30 by Robbie Bosco last year). It’s not Lindsley’s fault that the BYU offensive line is mediocre, as the coaches admit, but the fans pick on him constantly.

“The minute you walk on the field here, you better be an All-American or they (the fans) don’t even want to see you,” Lindsley said this week.

To be sure, Coach LaVell Edwards has been forced to change the course of Cougar history. BYU comes into Saturday’s game against San Diego State as a defensive team. Whereas their best players used to be quarterbacks, their best players chase quarterbacks. This is a major reversal. People in Provo remember Virgil Carter and Gifford Nielson and Marc Wilson and Jim McMahon and Steve Young and Bosco. They remember 40 passes a game. They remember 40 points a game.

Now, they see about 40 runs a game.

And about 27 points a game.

So BYU has lost once, twice, three times this year.

“Yep, people have actually been booing us,” wide receiver Mark Bellini said. “That’s just beyond me. We’ve been the winningest team in college football the last 10 years. I mean, our program has been phenomenal, and our fans--our supposed fans--are booing us. It’s just unheard of.”

To salvage its season, BYU must win Saturday and then win again against Air Force the Saturday after that. Then, they would be Western Athletic Conference champions for the 11th consecutive year.

“Listen, we’ll be normal BYU this Saturday (against SDSU),” Bellini promised. “We’ll walk in calmly and leave with a victory.”

But this isn’t a normal BYU team, for heaven’s sake. Edwards knew that Lindsley, a seventh-year senior, would have trouble throwing the football. He also knew he had a great running back in Lakei Heimuli and great defensive tackles in Shawn Knight and Jason Buck. As much as it hurt inside, Edwards decided to pass on the forward pass.

“Don’t worry, though,” he said. “We’ll be a passing team again someday.”

But not Saturday. First, they’ll try to set the tone with defense. For instance, Knight (6-feet 6-inches, 285 pounds) has 14.5 sacks this year. He’s very quick, which can be traced back to his days of playing tennis. Growing up in Sparks, Nev., he says he was “into the Wimbledon scene” and dreamed about making it in professional tennis. Today, Knight has a 21-inch neck, so he’s not built like most tennis players.

“It’s true,” he said. “I wanted to go to Wimbledon. But when I was 16, I got beat in the first round of a big tennis tournament, and the guy who beat me got beat in the second round. Finally, I succumbed to the peer pressure and started playing football.”

But he knew nothing of the game. Terms such as “snap count” and “screen” and “draw” were foreign.

“One of the things that perplexed me the most about football is that they’d say a guy got ‘100 rushing yards,’ ” Knight said. “But then they’d tell me to ‘rush the passer.’ I said, ‘I don’t understand! Who rushes? The offense or the defense?’ Maybe I’m just not that smart.”

So his high school coaches made it very simple. They told him, “Shawn, when the ball moves, chase it!”

He has been chasing ever since.

Buck, BYU’s second-leading tackler and an Outland Trophy candidate, is the opposite of Knight in many ways. Knight’s dad is an attorney and his mother is a teacher, whereas Buck grew up in poverty. Buck (6-6, 270) always tells Knight about how he and his family used to sleep under trucks because they didn’t have a house. Buck used to get shoes for Christmas or $5 for Christmas. Knight would get a stereo.

Football is not an end-all for Knight, but it seems so for Buck. Knight wants to be a physical therapist someday. Buck seems only to want to stop entire backfields. And, Buck, a pro prospect, might have a chance to make a living doing that.

“I played football to pay for an education,” Knight said. “I remember Mom asking me, ‘Shawn, do you still keep your scholarship if you don’t make the starting lineup?’ I said, ‘Yes, mom.’ And she said, ‘Then, wouldn’t it be better to just play in practice and not make the road trips? That way you wouldn’t miss any classes.

“As for Jason, football is his life. I worked construction with him one summer, and we talked football for a week straight. The second week, he started talking more football and I said, ‘Jason, don’t you talk about anything else but football?’ He got this puppy dog look on his face and said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’

“So I asked him, ‘What do you talk to your wife, Roxi, about?’ He said, ‘Uh, football.’ I said, ‘What does she say?’ And he said, ‘Not much. She listens a lot.’ ”

So, anchored by Knight and Buck, BYU’s defense is in good hands. The offense, however, is lacking a good arm.

It’s not that Lindsley is bad. He’s a good rollout passer and a good leader. After his freshman season at Ricks Junior College in Rexburg, Ida., Lindsley--a Mormon--spent two years on a mission.

“I didn’t throw a football hardly at all during those two years,” he said. “For two years, your whole effort is toward the church. It taught me a lot. I’d be up at 6 a.m. and work until 10:30 at night. You left everything else in life alone. No dates, no nothing.

“I tried to run as much as I could, but I didn’t lift (weights). No time. You forget (foot)ball. Let me tell you, my first time in the weight room when I got home was quite an experience. I could hardly lift. I was flabby.”

But he returned to Ricks as a sophomore and was all-conference. He walked on at BYU, and the coaches there were a big help. They told him to transfer.

He wouldn’t. So he redshirted a season and then he was third string for a season. Now, he’s 25 and finally a senior.

The booing, he can take. But he says his mother, a recent widow, is hurt by what she hears in the stands.

“The expectation level around her is so incredibly high,” Lindsley said. “Not only have they seen the Young years and the McMahon years and Marc Wilson and Gifford Nielson, but they continue to see these guys in the pros and they (transfer) what they see into what they expect here in the (BYU) stadium. . . . It’s very much like a pro town. If you don’t do well, they boo you.

“But, listen, I haven’t been booed and treated like Bosco got treated. And that’s the epitome of the whole irony here. When you’ve got a quarterback like Robbie Bosco who wins the national title, and then he goes 11-3 the next year and takes you to the Citrus Bowl? That’s 24-3 in two years, and he got booed! People here still talk bad about him. When I go to speak some places, people come up to me and say, ‘You’re doing such a better job than Bosco.’ It’s just a no-win situation.”

Still, he had better win. Much of the flak Lindsley caught was for the 24-20 loss to Colorado State. The Cougars were ahead by three points with four minutes left and had the ball on the Colorado State 16-yard line. The quarterback coach, Norm Chow, called for an end-zone pass but Lindsley--with his receivers covered--didn’t throw the ball away and his pass was intercepted. Colorado State then drove for the winning score.

Later, in a 10-7 home loss to Oregon State, Lindsley and the entire offense were booed loudly.

It was after that Oregon State loss that Bellini--who just had played his final BYU home game--sat crying at his locker.

“When I came here,” he said, with tears streaming down his face, “we used to walk up and down the field and kick people’s butts.”

No more.