It’s a rivalry that always finds a way to be revived

There have been painful and costly losses, triumphant finishes, a pledge to jump off a mountain, angry accusatory fingers pointed and threats never to play again.

Somehow, though, the football series between the University of Hawaii and Brigham Young has endured to reach a milestone 30th game today at Aloha Stadium.

But, in a series with its flash points, getting to this point hasn’t always been easy.

In fact, today’s nationally televised game — and next’s year’s return to Provo, Utah — had been on the chopping block for a while.

When Norm Chow, who spent parts of three decades (1975-1999) at BYU as an assistant, became UH’s head coach in 2012 he is said to have “adamantly” demanded officials cancel as many of the final six games of what was contracted to be a nine-game series as possible.

The reasoning, in large part, was that he did not want to aid the Cougars’ recruiting in the Rainbow Warriors’ backyard, though some lingering bad feelings from the way he was passed over as LaVell Edwards’ successor may have contributed as well.

It was not the first time somebody wanted to end what had become UH’s most intense rivalry.

Frustrated by a stretch in which UH would eventually go winless for 10 games in a row (1978-88), then-Hawaii athletic director Ray Nagel sought a way for the Rainbow Warriors to get a rotation that reduced the number of games with BYU in the 1980s and ’90s. No easy trick since they were in the same conference.

Nagel, who had coached at BYU’s most intense rival, Utah, and even got the better of the Cougars, going 6-2 in the 1950s and ’60s, had experienced his own recruiting tug-o’-wars. At UH, Nagel grew frustrated by BYU’s domination, especially the fact that they had built a lot of their success with players from Hawaii’s backyard.

But BYU brought out the crowds and UH was in no position to turn down sellouts, so the Cougars remained a prominent part of the schedules.

After the 1998 breakup of the Western Athletic Conference, where the schools had competed for nearly 20 years (1979-97), then UH President Kenneth Mortimer vowed not to schedule the renegade schools, including BYU. After Mortimer resigned in 2000, the schools quickly added a home-and-home in 2001 and ’02.

But that was the last of it until, in 2008, BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe and UH’s Jim Donovan, who had played against each other in the 1981 and ’82 games, met in Dallas to revive the series.

In 2011, with UH needing the income and BYU, an independent having bolted the Mountain West, needing the games, an extension was agreed upon that would run through 2020.

Donovan was no longer at UH when the school was able to act on Chow’s request and Holmoe, who remains at BYU, was described as extremely upset. Eventually the schools agreed to drop only the 2019 and ’20 games.

When David Matlin took over as UH AD, fences were mended and an agreement to add games for 2024 and ’25 has resulted.

Edwards, whose 10-game run of domination ended thunderously in back-to-back blowouts by UH — 56-14 in 1989 and 59-28 in 1990 — didn’t try to end the series. He enjoyed the golf in Hawaii, as much as the recruiting, too much. But he vowed to jump off 11,752-foot Mount Timpanogos in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest if he lost to UH in Cougar Stadium in 1991.

He never had to make that leap. But BYU, which had played as many as seven consecutive games at Aloha Stadium in order to take advantage of the extra contest permitted by the NCAA’s Hawaii Exemption and is 21-8 in the series, quickly went to a home-and-home rotation thereafter and also saw its 12-0 run at a Bowl Championship Series berth rudely ended, 72-45, here in 2001.

Going on 30 games now the one constant has been that, while UH and BYU might not always like each other, they can’t stay away, either.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.