BYU Cougars @ Air Force Falcons Football Preview

This is not an ordinary conference game in week two of a college football season. When BYU and Air Force get together in Colorado Springs, there will be a special emotional charge on the campus of the United States Air Force Academy.

After a 10-1 regular season in 1998, the Air Force Falcons traveled to Las Vegas for the Western Athletic Conference's championship game. The AFA faced Brigham Young in an early-December duel and a matchup of the WAC's two division winners under the league’s setup that year. The late-morning game, kicking off ABC's "Championship Saturday" tripleheader (with the Big 12 and SEC title games following), owned a national TV audience and was the latest installment of a great Mountain time zone rivalry. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Air Force and BYU engaged in many enthralling battles enhanced by the contrast in styles between the two teams. The Falcons posed the wishbone offense of head coach Fisher DeBerry, while the Cougars relied on the vertical passing attack cultivated by coach LaVell Edwards. Air Force boasted elite wishbone quarterbacks such as Bart Weiss and Dee Dowis, while BYU claimed prominent passers such as Jim McMahon, Steve Young, Robbie Bosco, and Ty Detmer.  

Air Force pulled out a 20-13 victory in that 1998 game, one of the most cherished moments in the Air Force side of a rivalry that was largely dominated by BYU, despite the proliferation of classic battles on the gridiron. BYU has gone 24-6 against the AFA up to this point, but that doesn’t mean this series has been an afterthought. Anything but. (Air Force's six wins: 39-38 in 1982 at Provo, 38-12 in 1995 at AFA; 20-13 in 1998 at Vegas; 31-23 in 2000 at AFA; 52-9 in 2002 at AFA; 24-10 in 2003 at Provo.)

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What made Air Force’s 1998 win in the WAC title game so significant was that it marked the last meeting between the teams in the WAC. When that game was played in Las Vegas, Air Force, BYU and six other WAC members already had decided to bolt from the WAC and form the Mountain West Conference, which eventually took place in 1999. The longstanding association with the Western Athletic Conference was dissolved, but the bond between these two schools had been cemented.

Then came the wild 2010 college sports offseason, a long summer of abrupt shifts and transitions.

Utah left the Mountain West Conference it had joined in 1999 to pursue life in the Pac-10. Boise State then entered the Mountain West in June on the heels of Utah’s exodus. Then, on August 31, after a great deal of maneuvering, BYU decided to bolt from the Mountain West and become a football independent while joining the West Coast Conference in other sports and setting up an out-of-conference football series with a number of WAC schools. BYU had initially intended to join the WAC for non-football sports, but Mountain West maneuverings (which brought aboard WAC schools Fresno State and Nevada) forced BYU to re-evaluate its plans, since the WAC had been reduced to only six member institutions, not enough for a viable league.

People at BYU and Air Force want to continue this series in the future, but the short-term fact is that this is the last time the Cougars and Falcons will meet as conference opponents. That’s why the emotions will soar through the skies at Falcon Stadium this Saturday.

It will be special. It will be poignant. It will be supercharged with electricity.

It will be BYU and Air Force, once more and with a lot of feeling in a Mountain West swan song.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer