‘Dad was calm, Mom was worried’: Edwards family recounts BYU’s 1984 championship season

Editor’s note: Second in an occasional series exploring BYU’s 1984 national football championship.
The family of the late, great LaVell Edwards, the architect of BYU football, had a front-row seat for the school’s historic, ground-breaking national championship run in 1984. Ask them about it now and they recall the things everyone recalls — the Kyle Morrell Play, especially — but also the family stories that aren’t common knowledge — the Charm Bracelet, Game-Day Stew, following the games on late-night radio and the apologies from the Cougars’ famous critics.
It has been 7 1/2 years since their father and husband passed away. Patti, his widow, is 92 and is sharp and active. She continues to live in the family home in Provo. She has 25 great-grandchildren, with another one on the way.
The Edwards’ oldest child, John, a former middle-distance runner for BYU (he once ran a 4:03 mile in a relay), is an orthopedic surgeon in Bountiful; his wife, Becky, is a former state legislator who made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate against Mike Lee. Keeping a vow they made decades ago, the couple took a break from their work to serve a church mission (in American Samoa) and then returned to Bountiful and their careers. They raised four children.
Jim, who raised five children with his wife, Lorri, is a trial lawyer in Las Vegas. He was a plaintiff lawyer for years, but a few years ago he became an in-house attorney for American Family Insurance, trying liability cases. He has a unique perspective; he was a backup wide receiver on that 1984 national championship team.
Ann Cannon, the youngest, lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Ken. They raised five children, all boys. She wrote a newspaper column for the two Salt Lake newspapers for years, as well as several books, but she has taken a long break from writing while dealing with health challenges. She’s had more injuries than her dad’s linebackers — in the past three years, a broken shoulder, a broken tailbone, broken ribs and hip replacement surgery, all in separate incidents. Fortunately, there’s an orthopedic surgeon in the family.
The 1984 season was “magical” for the Edwards family — John uses that word to describe it. Four times the team came from behind to win — 20-14 at Pitt, 18-13 at Hawaii, 41-38 over Wyoming and 24-17 over Michigan in the Holiday Bowl, which proved to be the national championship game. The team also went to the wire in a 30-25 win on the road against Air Force. The stakes and the suspense rose every week, as the Cougars’ winning streak continued (carrying over from the previous season, it would stretch to 25 games, ending in 1985) and their national ranking rose with it.
It was uncanny how the Cougars found a way to win in the most precarious situations, and never more so than in Honolulu. Trailing 12-10, Hawaii marched 84 yards in 21 plays to the two-yard line early in the fourth quarter. BYU was in big trouble. Quarterback Raphel Cherry moved the ball to within inches of the goal on two quarterback sneaks.
On third down, safety Kyle Morrell ignored his assigned position on the right side of the line and, guessing the snap count, raced toward the quarterback, leaping over the center just as the ball was snapped. He grabbed Cherry by the shoulder pads as he flipped in midair and stopped him for no gain. It might be the most iconic play in a century of playing football at BYU, along with the Miracle Bowl touchdown.
Patti and her children remember the growing suspense as the team’s ranking moved from week to week, from No. 13 in Week 2 and then, in the following weeks, 8, 6, 7, 5, 7, 5, 4, 4, 3, 1, 1. Fate was on their side. Every team ahead of them in the rankings lost, one by one. Everything that had to happen, happened.
Ann: “At home, you wouldn’t even know Dad was in the middle of competing for a national championship. He was always calm. Mom worried … she worried that something would happen to get in the way. She had her good luck charm bracelet that she wore to games. In that case it worked.”
John: “The whole thing was a family event. It was no different that year. We’d go down to the stadium at noon. Mom was very superstitious. She wore the same clothes. The same charm bracelet. She made the same game-day stew. She’d put it in the oven, then we’d leave for the game and when we came home we’d have game-day stew. My wife makes it now. All the kids make game-day stew.”
Note: John once made the mistake of doubting his mother’s superstitions. During the fourth game of the 1975 season, Patti and her kids arrived at the stadium only to realize something was missing. “I can’t believe it; I left my charm bracelet at home,” she said. John turned to his mother and said, “Mom, your bracelet has nothing to do with them winning the game.” At halftime, BYU trailed 12-0. Patti raced out of the stadium and drove home to get her charm bracelet, returning in time for the third quarter. BYU won 16-15. As John tells it, “At the end of the game, Mom took off her charm bracelet, put it in her purse and just smiled at me.”
Jim: “I remember we had a great practice the previous spring. It was cold and snowy, but players were flying around, having fun. There was a great attitude. There was this feeling that this team was going to be something special. That summer, we got a letter from one of our team captains, Craig Garrick, saying, look, we have a great opportunity here; let’s make this special. One of the things I remember that season was the Colorado State game (the fifth game). It got pretty chippy and we beat them pretty good. That’s when I started thinking about a championship.
“Afterward, my dad said, ‘Hey, if we keep playing a game at a time, great things might happen. That resonated with the team. It was the first time my dad said anything about what could happen in the future. It’s funny because the previous year, when we won 11 straight games, I asked my dad if he thought BYU could ever be No. 1. He said, ‘I don’t think you can get enough momentum in the Rocky Mountains.’”
Ann: “It was an exciting time. I remember that Kyle Morrell play in Hawaii. We stayed up late to watch it. We followed everything that happened.”
John: “I was in med school at the University of Utah. I was listening to the Hawaii game on my radio in my apartment in the middle of the night. I remember the Morrell play. Hawaii was at the goal line. I thought, the game is over, there’s no way to stop him. There goes the unbeaten season. Then Morrell made one of the greatest defensive plays ever. I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like (on film).
“I followed the season any way I could. When I was living in New York doing my residency, the hospital had a Watts line (enabling a free call anywhere in the country). I was on it a lot. There was no way to listen to or watch BYU games if you weren’t in Utah. I used the Watts line to call my father-in-law and he would give me play-by-play over the phone.”
John: “In all honesty, it felt like any other year. Football season always was a fairly intense time. We did well during the ‘80s. We were winning a lot of games (11-1 the previous season). It felt like any other year till the very end. It’s almost more magical retrospectively than it was at the time.
“You wanted them to win because it was your family. I remember the pressure was building each week, as you can imagine, as we kept winning and rising in the polls. I remember once I went to see my dad on the practice field. He was talking to (athletic director) Glen Tuckett. I walked up just as Glen said to my dad, ‘You know, LaVell, I’m pretty sure we could get our jobs back at Murray and Granite (high schools).’ Life was a little easier and less complicated for them then.”
Jim: “We had a players-only meeting the night before the Holiday Bowl. Nobody mentioned the national championship or finishing No. 1, but (Glen) Kozlowski comes right out with it. He said, ‘Look, we’re a team, but we have one responsibility and that is to beat the guy across from us. Every play think, I’m going to beat this guy in front of me.’”
Ann: “Dad did say at some point, ‘We might have a better chance at this (a national championship) than I thought. Anyway, we’d been to the Holiday Bowl a lot. We hoped this time things would be different (they had lost there in ‘78, ‘79, ‘81, ‘82). It did and there we were. People complained about the weakness of schedule. It takes a lot to win game after game after game.
“We lived in Salt Lake. I remember driving to Provo and seeing the signs congratulating my dad and the team. That was cool. It was a really happy time in our family. It seems like a long time ago that that happened. I doubt it will ever happen again.”
Patti: “We really didn’t know the final result until we were in San Francisco. LaVell was coaching the Shriners all-star game with (Baylor coach) Grant Teaff and (Iowa coach) Hayden Fry. We were in a Chinese restaurant having dinner with the Teaffs when we learned that we had won the national championship. That was a wonderful, exciting time. There was some criticism about the schedule, especially by (Oklahoma coach) Barry Switzer and (broadcaster) Bryant Gumbel. Barry Switzer later wrote LaVell an apology for the remarks he had made. Bryant Gumbel apologized too.”
Jim: “People criticized the schedule. But there was something about that team; we weren’t going to be denied. We were going to win every game. It wasn’t cockiness, just quiet confidence. If we had played Oklahoma or Washington that year we would’ve beaten them. Look, it’s not like we were just a bunch of overachievers. We had a lot of players on that team that ended up in the NFL.”
Note: Fifteen players from that team were chosen in the NFL draft over the course of the next three drafts.
Note: When recalling the 1984 season, it’s natural to recall the man who orchestrated it all.
Patti: “When I hear a car pull up at the house, I still think it’s him. A song will remind me of him. And rainbows. He loved rainbows. The memories are sweet.”
Ann: “Every night I think about him. Just all kinds of memories. He was a good dad.”
John: “I think about him almost every day … I still miss him.”
Jim: “I think about him. It’s such feelings of gratitude and to be part of his life.”