BYU, Utah, USU bowl trivia

Since it’s bowl season, and in case you didn’t know….

Utah’s last trip to the Sun Bowl was 1939.

That would be the Sun Bowl game, not the stadium. Utah made many trips to the Sun Bowl stadium over the WAC years. Last time Utah played in the stadium was 1996, resulting in a 34-27 win over the UTEP Miners.

By the way, Utah won that 1939 Sun Bowl, 26-0 over New Mexico in a game experts predicted would be one of the closest of the bowl season.

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BYU’s Armed Forces Bowl opponent, Tulsa, used to be a regular on BYU’s schedule. Aside from the Golden Hurricane’s 2007 win over BYU, the teams met three consecutive years in the 1990s.

In 1995-97 they were both members of the 16-team WAC and played twice in Provo and once in Oklahoma. BYU won all three of those games.

But it was never really a rivalry. Tulsa didn’t resonate with BYU fans and vice versa; it was just another smallish school in a far-off market. Tulsa’s claim to fame was that it was nearly 4,000 miles from Hawaii, another team in the far-flung WAC. But it still wasn’t the longest distance for Hawaii to travel. That was Houston, where Rice is located.

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Everyone knows Utah State hasn’t been to a bowl game in 14 years. Now it’s back, and in the same place.

The Aggies’ last bowl appearance was the ’97 Humanitarian Bowl (now the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl), in John L. Smith’s final game as USU’s coach. The Aggies lost 35-19 to Cincinnati.

USU hasn’t won seven regular season games since 1979 and has never played Ohio U.

That ’79 Aggie team included future NFL’ers Rick Parros, a running back; Eric Hipple, a quarterback; and James “Murf, the Sweetest Thing on Turf” Murphy, a future NFL kick returner.

ERIC HIPPLE