Rebels get last look at LaVell

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000 | 10:32 a.m.

Back in 1972, before he became a college football coaching icon, LaVell Edwards took over a BYU football program that had never appeared in a bowl game during 47 years of competition.

So little attention was paid to the school that the Associated Press once referred to the Cougars' head coach as "Ed LaVell" in one of its stories. And that was after three years on the job.

Twenty-nine years, 252 victories, 22 bowl games, 20 conference titles, a national championship and a Heisman Trophy winner later, 69-year-old LaVell Edwards is coaching his final season for the Cougars. And Saturday afternoon at Cougar Stadium, he'll lead a struggling 1-3 BYU squad against UNLV (1-1) for the final time in his storied career.

Edwards announced his retirement on Aug. 17 during a surprise press conference in Provo.

"Last winter I made the decision to coach for only one more season," Edwards said. "Since then, I've been wrestling with the timing of the announcing that decision.

"To be honest, I've never in my wildest dreams believed I would do this. All I wanted to do was play it out and when it was time to go, hang it up and sail off into the sunset."

Since then the accolades have continued to pour in for Edwards.

"He's a legend," Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry said. "He's synonymous with BYU. God bless the man who tries to replace him."

"If he'd have been in the South, they'd have named a highway after him and let him coach two years after he died," said Southern Utah head coach C. Ray Gregory.

"I don't think anyone is irreplaceable," Utah head coach Ron McBride said of his coaching archrival. "But he's as close as you can be to being irreplaceable. He's a role model for what BYU stands for, what the (LDS) Church stands for in all the things he does."

UNLV head coach John Robinson got to know Edwards back in the 1970s during his first stint as a head coach at USC when both went on a golf trip to Europe following a coaching clinic.

"I really liked him," Robinson said. "He and I and our wives hung out a lot on that trip. He was a very nice man."

Robinson said that BYU should "build a two-story statue" of Edwards outside of Cougar Stadium.

"He's been good for football," Robinson said. "BYU's a good program. He built that program. He is a guy that football is better for him having been in it.

"He's one of those few guys who has stayed in the same spot, partly because of religion and because he has a lot of ties there and all that. There was probably a point where he could have had a pro coaching job if he wanted to."

As for Saturday's Mountain West game, Robinson said: "He's going to try and beat my brains out and I'm going to try and beat his out."

One measure of just how much Edwards has meant to BYU is the site of Saturday's game. Cougar Stadium seats 65,000 fans and is arguably one of the 10 best college stadiums in the country to view a game.

When Edwards took over for Tom Hudspeth in 1972, the Cougars played in a 10,000-seat stadium that has since been torn down.

"Football game day is now a major happening in Provo, like it is at other universities," Edwards said. "I like the fact that football is important at BYU now. I get more satisfaction from that than anything else.

"It's turned out whole lot better than I ever dreamed."