1989 HOLIDAY BOWL : Detmer Falls Into Line for Brigham Young

For a decade, he ruled this college town, if not the state, like some kind of jock king. He was the starting quarterback at Brigham Young University, and he was not just another player; around here, he was football royalty.

This linage was pure: Gifford Neilson, Marc Wilson, Jim McMahon, Steve Young and Robbie Bosco. Each was groomed under his predecessor to inherit the starring role. They formed a dynasty that produced a record 10 consecutive Western Athletic Conference titles (1976-85) and, in 1984, the school’s only national championship.

But Camelot did not last forever. Princes did not always grow up to be kings.

Steve Lindsley, Bob Jensen and Sean Covey discovered that, and so did the BYU followers. The reigns of Lindsley, Jensen and Covey as the starting BYU quarterback were short--none started an entire season--and not always productive. In their three seasons as the team’s leading passers, they combined for 35 touchdown passes, two more than Bosco had in his junior season.

The subjects grew restless. They wanted a new leader. Enter red-shirt sophomore Ty Detmer, a lanky Texan with a twang in his voice and touch on his throws. Camelot lived again.

“Sean is a great quarterback, but Ty is the one,” said junior wide receiver Andy Boyce, one of the few remaining members of the 1984 national championship team. “He just had this glow.”

And the results have been shining.

In his first season as the Cougars’ starting quarterback, Detmer broke or tied 13 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. records. He led the Cougars to a 10-2 record and their first Western Athletic Conference since Bosco’s senior season of 1985. Friday in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium against No. 18 Penn State (7-3-1), he will try to lead the No. 19 Cougars to their first Holiday Bowl victory since they completed an undefeated national championship season with a 24-17 victory over Michigan.

For the first time in four seasons, the Cougars might have a quarterback prepared to fulfill what tradition demands at BYU. These expectations grew over time to the point they became almost impossible to meet and might have contributed to the downfall of Detmer’s more immediate predecessors.

“So much is expected from that position,” said Bosco, now a BYU graduate assistant working with the quarterbacks. “By the time I got there, it was a monster, and by the time I left, it was even bigger. Those expectations were hard on the next person, and for two or three years, they weren’t met.

“As far as Ty, he was able to come into a more comfortable situation, where it hadn’t been built into a monster like it was when I got there. Not to take anything away from Ty, because he would have been able to handle it, but a lot of the pressure had been taken off the quarterback, and it worked out real well for him.”

Actually, expectations for Detmer probably were no different than for the others. The difference is that Detmer, so far, has met them.

He threw for 4,560 yards, the most ever by a sophomore and just 139 yards fewer than the NCAA record set by junior Andre Ware, the Heisman Trophy winner from Houston.

His 15 interceptions, 32 touchdown passes and 64.3% completion rate all compare reasonably well with Ware, who threw 15 interceptions, had 46 touchdown passes and completed 63.2% of his passes. And Detmer did so despite 166 fewer passing attempts than Ware’s NCAA-record 578 and 100 fewer completions than Ware’s record 365.

But Detmer, who finished ninth in the Heisman voting, has received only a fraction of the publicity accorded Ware.

“It is tough to sit and see all of that,” Detmer said. “My roommates like to kid me about it.”

After sitting out the 1987 season as a redshirt, Detmer played in 10 of BYU’s 12 regular-season games last season, starting one game when Covey was injured. He struggled at first--throwing four interceptions when he relieved an injured Covey in the opener at Wyoming.

“Some initiation into college football,” Detmer said. But by the time of the Freedom Bowl against Colorado, he had begun to show the form that would make him the heir apparent in the line of Cougar quarterbacks. He replaced Covey in the second half and led BYU to 13 points for a 20-17 comeback victory.

With Covey, a senior, missing spring practice while recovering from knee surgery, Detmer stepped in and took control. By the time preseason camp was finishing up in late August, there was little question who the starter would be this season.

“Ty is a lot more patient than the quarterbacks we have had in the past,” Boyce said. “He will wait a little longer and scramble a little longer to get the ball down field rather than pass off to his (running) back quick. He just hangs in there and has a knack for buying time.”

BYU Coach LaVell Edwards does not hesitate in his praise of Detmer’s potential. He said Detmer is more advanced at this stage of his career than any of the quarterbacks he has seen in his 27 seasons coaching at BYU. That is a considerable statement considering those who have come before.

“There just is something special about him,” Edwards said. “He just seems to know what to do in every situation. He knows just when to hold onto the ball, just when to let it go, just when to get rid of it and just when to scramble. It’s something all the great ones had, and Ty has got it.”

It helped that Detmer was raised the son of a high school football coach in Texas. His father, Sonny, coached him at Southwest High School in San Antonio, where Detmer set a state record for passing yardage.

“He has great innate skills as a quarterback, and you sure don’t teach that,” said Norm Chow, the BYU quarterback coach. “I think his dad had a lot to do with that. He came to us that way. That was nothing we did here.”

But while his father was intimately involved in his football career, when it was time for Detmer to chose a college, he said, his father left the decision to him.

Detmer said he made a list of the schools he was seriously considering. Because of its reputation as a passing school, BYU was near the top, as were such schools as Arizona State and UCLA. Because he is an avid fisherman and hunter, the school’s setting at the base of the Wasatch Mountains was another plus. He said he also liked the school’s clean-cut image.

But this is where the recruiting story takes a turn. In the summer before his senior season, Detmer and his father loaded up the family car and headed for Provo for what was supposed to be the first stop on a Western tour of schools Detmer was considering. It turned out to be the one and only.

After a meeting with the coaches and a tour of the campus, the Detmers told Edwards that if the Cougars would be happy to have Ty, he would happy to have them. He offered to make an oral commitment to the school six months before he could sign a binding national letter of intent.

Edwards said he was surprised by the offer but accepted it, even though he had his doubts.

“At first when they said that, I wondered if there was something wrong with Ty that I was missing,” Edwards said. “At the time, he looked about 15 years old, wasn’t as tall and wasn’t as big. I figured I must have been missing something.”

Actually, Detmer has never been one to impress coaches with his physical appearance. At 6-feet, there are many quarterbacks taller than him, and at 170 pounds, there are plenty who weigh more. But Detmer possesses other, more valuable assets.

“The No. 1 quality is smarts,” said Covey, who has spent his senior season as Detmer’s backup. “That will get you farther than anything else. He has got an accurate arm, but not a very strong arm. He has average speed. But he is just smarter than heck. If you can read defenses, have an average arm, average speed, average everything, you can still be an outstanding quarterback.”

Once made the starter, it did not take Detmer long to establish his style. The Cougars cite two game situations that proved what the kind of leader Detmer would become.

The first was in the second game, with BYU in the midst of a two-minute drive in a 46-41 loss to Washington State. A play came in from the coaches, and Detmer changed it in the huddle without even looking at the defense. His new call resulted in a first-down completion to wide receiver Jeff Frandsen.

“He just said, ‘We’re not going to run that play; we’re going to run this play,’ ” Frandsen said.

But the most convincing proof came Nov. 4, a 45-41 victory over Oregon. Trailing by three points with two minutes to play, Detmer launched the Cougars on a 90-yard drive that ended a minute later with a game-winning touchdown pass to Frandsen. That series made believers of them all.

“That really got him going,” Chow said. “He took over, and there was no question he was going to take us in. That’s when I knew he was the guy.”

The search was over. The legacy of the BYU quarterback once again was in strong hands. Ty Detmer had arrived.