Marshawn, Marshawn, Marshawn! Wasn't that what Jan Brady used to say every time somebody fawned over her older sister in those "Brady Bunch" reruns? Well, close enough. The Brigham Young defense thought it was close enough to Marshawn Lynch, Cal's 215-pound sophomore battering ram, during Thursday night's Pioneer PureVision Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium. But that was only half the battle. The other half was tackling him, and the Cougars couldn't do it. Lynch rushed for 194 yards on 24 carries and scored three touchdowns, two coming on tackle-shredding runs of 23 and 35 yards, to power the Golden Bears to a 35-28 victory over the not-quite-as-golden Cougars before a Las Vegas Bowl-record crowd of 40,053. But outside of the Lynch household and the college towns of Provo and Berkeley and their concentric circles, none of that probably matters a whole heck of a lot. What does/should matter to local fans is that it took two out-of-state teams to fill Sam Boyd Stadium to its modest 40,000-seat capacity. The place was absolutely packed, which is only the sixth time in my 18 years driving out here that I've been able to report that. But once was for a U2 concert and once was for a Supercross motorcycle race, and those don't really count because that's not the purpose for which the stadium was built. That, of course, was football, or whatever you call the game that UNLV tries so hard to play on Saturdays.
So if history has proven anything, it's that you can't have a football sellout around these parts without Wisconsin or BYU. The only other times I had to leave home three hours early so I wouldn't miss the press box meal were the 2002 and 1996 Wisconsin-UNLV games -- when 42,075 and 40,091, respectively, poured through the turnstiles and ate all of the bratwurst -- and the 1996 Western Athletic Conference championship game, when 41,238 Wyoming and BYU fans drank all of the Budweiser and 7-Up. If everybody in the stadium that morning had burped in unison, they would have heard it in Tibet. If you were keeping score, it would have been Budweiser 56, The Uncola 14. Nobody can drink beer like a Wyoming fan, even if he's outnumbered 3-1.
That was about the same margin by which the BYU fans outnumbered Cal's on Thursday. So while the founding fathers thought it a good idea to separate church and state, church and private school are another matter, at least when you've got football tickets to sell. That's why Mountain West fans should embrace the Cougars' faithful (and that's putting it literally) rather than poke fun at its holier-than-thou attitude and tailgate party sponsored by O'Doul's. I can't believe I just said that. I'll never be able to pass "Go" in Fort Collins again. I won't be able to collect $200 in Albuquerque. More importantly, I won't be able to use my "Get Out of Jail Free" card in Laramie as I'm sure it already has been revoked. But watching those seats fill up Saturday night, even the ones in the upper crust of the pie sections in the corners of the end zone, I had an epiphany. It suddenly became more obvious than the nose tackle in BYU quarterback John Beck's face. That regardless of how many running backs Utah sends to the NFL, or minor bowl games that Colorado State wins, or how often former New Mexico Lobo Brian Urlacher is romantically linked with one of the Hilton sisters, that the flagship program of the Mountain West was, is and forever will be the one with the big "Y" on its helmets. Not that there's anything wrong with that. BYU is to the Mountain West what Notre Dame is to everybody else, with the exception that Cougars fans spend a little more time in church on Sunday. You either love 'em or hate 'em. Sometimes at the same time. Take Tina Kunzer-Murphy, the Las Vegas Bowl executive director. As predicted, BYU fans filled the stadium Thursday, getting the bowl accreditation watchdogs and critics who chided her for choosing the 6-5 Cougars instead of conference-champion TCU off her back. So she loves BYU. But then she had to hire a helicopter to get an aerial shot of the sold-out stadium for posterity's sake, and that will cost ESPN, which owns the game, some petty cash. So she loves BYU not. Actually, you can't blame Kunzer-Murphy for spending some of Stuart Scott's Christmas bonus to get that rarest of photographs because who knows when it might happen again? Actually, I think I know the answer. The next time BYU goes 6-5, it will probably be back. And so will its fans.
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