Just days after BYU’s 23-16 defeat to Navy in the 1978 Holiday Bowl, there was trouble afoot and it threatened the future of Cougar football and the coaching reign of LaVell Edwards. The unrest reached its peak week after the holidays when prized 6-foot-6 quarterback Marc Wilson walked into Edwards’ office to tell him he was quitting the team.
“I was done,” Wilson said. “I talked to my dad over Christmas and said, ‘I can’t go through another year like this. I’m just gonna finish my classes, graduate and move on to law school.’”
Wilson’s father supported him but asked that he do one thing first — go talk to Edwards.
“I waited two weeks because I was too scared to tell him, but I walked in and finally said, ‘LaVell, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not coming back. I’m gonna graduate and go to law school.’”
Edwards sat and listened and then pointed out, “You don’t need to decide that today. There is no reason you have to decide that today. Wait two or three months and see how it feels and come talk to me.”
Wilson watched Edwards pull out a manila-colored legal pad and he wrote down his name.
“I was at least 20 guys down on that legal pad,” Wilson said. “Twenty guys had gone in there before me and said the same thing, so I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.”
Edwards was not only on the brink of losing his quarterback, but he had to work quickly to prevent a mutiny prior to spring practice.
The English issue
Wilson wasn’t happy with offensive coordinator Wally English, who in one year, transformed Doug Scovil’s high-powered offense into a free-for-all.
“Wally had a lot of problems with Doug and all the success Doug had, so he wanted to forge his own way,” Wilson said. “He was afraid that if we did the same thing in ’78 that we did in ’77, kept the same offense with the same guys, that he wouldn’t get any credit. They would just say it was Doug’s offense and Doug’s guys, so Wally went out and changed everything under the sun.”
English came to BYU from the Detroit Lions, where he was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for former BYU head coach Tommy Hudspeth. English replaced Scovil who left after the 1977 season for an NFL job with the Chicago Bears.
The biggest change was at quarterback. After BYU led the nation in passing in 1977, English switched from Wilson to Jim McMahon as the starter and then began rotating the two throughout the season.
As a result, the Cougars’ passing attack failed to finish higher than fourth in the WAC and far from the national leaders.
“It was just a miserable year. Not just for me, it was miserable for Jim,” Wilson said. “It was miserable for everybody. I’ve never said that before, but I think after 40 years it’s finally time.”
Edwards knew what he had to do, both for the current team and his future.
“LaVell was a crafty, smart guy,” Wilson said. “He went to the NCAA Coaches Convention and talked up English and got him hired at Pittsburgh.”
A surprise visitor
BYU football didn’t have team meetings in February, so when Edwards called the players together for a special summit in the Richards Physical Education Building, everybody was accounted for.
“We are all sitting there not knowing what was going on because it was such a strange, out-of-nowhere meeting,” Wilson said.
Edwards stood up and took charge.
“I want the defense to go down the hall and for the offense to stay here,” said the sixth-year head coach. The defensive got up and walked out.
Looking at the offense, Edwards said, “There is someone I want you to meet.”
He then turned to the door and walked out of the room leaving the players in a quiet quandary. A moment later, the door opened and in walked Doug Scovil, back from his one-year stint with the Bears, and he had a message for the kid from Seattle and his teammates who wanted to quit.
“Doug was so funny,” Wilson said. “He walks in and says, ‘We’ve got a guy sitting in this room that is better than anybody I had last year in Chicago (referring to Wilson). I don’t know what happened this year, but we are going to get back to work!”
Scovil turned to the door and walked out of the room and the meeting ended.
“When that happened all of us guys said, ‘We are in!’ ” Wilson said. “We are not going anywhere.”
With Scovil’s offense back, the Cougars went from 9-4 in 1978 to 34-4 over the next three seasons. Three years after that, with Scovil gone but his offense still in Provo, the Cougars won the 1984 national championship.
“I think the biggest thing LaVell learned was that never again would he allow that offense originated by Doug to leave Utah County, no matter who the offensive coordinator was,” Wilson said. “And over all the remaining years, he never did.”
For Wilson, Scovil’s return was a chance to re-start a career that was kick-started by an injury to Gifford Nielsen.
Two ‘first impressions’
Wilson and McMahon sat behind Nielsen on the depth chart in 1977. But when Nielsen suffered a season-ending knee injury at Oregon State during the fourth week of the season, Wilson was called into Scovil’s office.
“Doug put his playbook down in front of me with a stack of sticky notes and said, ‘I want you to put a note on every play you like in this offense because Marc, you are not Gifford and it doesn’t make sense for me to call plays that Gifford liked if you don’t,” Wilson said.
BYU quarterback Marc Wilson scrambles for yards as Indiana linebacker Craig Walls zeros in during Holiday Bowl in 1978.
The eager quarterback put sticky tabs on all of the roll-out plays, plays that Scovil never called for Nielsen. He preferred to keep his quarterbacks protected in the pocket.
“Doug looked at me and said, ‘What’s with all these roll-out plays?’” Wilson said. “I grew up as a little kid playing two-man touch in the street and I’m a lot more comfortable running around.”
Scovil listened to the skinny sophomore from Seattle and changed the entire offense. The following Saturday, with Wilson rolling out all over the place, the Cougars stunned Colorado State 63-17. Wilson threw a Western Athletic Conference-record seven touchdown passes in his debut and his first actual game action since the second week of his senior season at Shorecrest High.
“After doing that I thought, ‘This isn’t that hard. I’m just gonna keep setting WAC records and I did the following week at Wyoming,’” Wilson said with a hint of sarcasm. “I continued my WAC record-setting pace with six interceptions.”
Despite the difference in those two first impressions, BYU won both games and Cougars fans quickly adjusted to the Wilson era, completely unaware of the challenges that were coming in 1978 that threatened to shut down the quarterback factory before the assembly line ever rolled out McMahon, Steve Young and Robbie Bosco.
BYU’s network debut
With the mutiny averted, Scovil back in charge of the offense, and McMahon redshirting, Wilson and the Cougars steamrolled through the first 10 games. They arrived at Jack Murphy Stadium to face San Diego State on Nov. 24, 1979 — ready to make history.
Never before had BYU played on national network television and ABC had its cameras in place to showcase the 10th-ranked Cougars to the entire country.
Wilson was understandably rattled.
“Sometimes in warmups you can’t complete a ball to save your life and there is no defense. Guys are running routes and you are throwing over their head or at their feet,” he said. “Warming up for the game, I could not complete a pass and Scovil didn’t want to take the offense into the locker room until I did.”
Sure enough, as soon as Wilson completed his first pass in the entire warmup session, Scovil called the team into the locker room.
“So, I’m sitting in there thinking, ‘Man, this is a great time to forget how to throw the ball — a nationally televised game and I’m a Heisman Trophy candidate. This is perfect’”
Fortunately for Wilson and the Cougars, he remembered how to throw and his first three passes each went for touchdowns in BYU’s 63-14 rout of the Aztecs.
ABC Sports announcer Al Michaels was impressed.
“I’ll tell you, Wilson is as good as everybody says he is,” he said after Wilson’s third touchdown strike.
Kick to the gut
BYU marched into the 1979 Holiday Bowl with a perfect 11-0 record and ranked No. 9 but lost to Indiana 38-37 after Brent Johnson missed a 27-yard field goal as time expired.
“It was heartbreaking for a lot of reasons,” Wilson said. “Brent is one of my best friends and he had made three field goals in the game already. Looking back, we didn’t do him any favors. The hashmarks are so wide in college football and if you are close to the end zone you are left with a funky angle to make that kick.”
“It was heartbreaking to lose that way because Brent was such a great kicker. I know we have had some great teams, but I’ll take that ’79 team against any team in BYU history.” — Marc Wilson
Wilson wishes he had used his final play as a BYU Cougar to center the ball in the middle of the field so that Johnson had a better chance.
“It was heartbreaking to lose that way because Brent was such a great kicker,” he said. “I know we have had some great teams, but I’ll take that ’79 team against any team in BYU history.”
Super Bowl champion
Wilson won two Super Bowls with the Raiders, but not in the way he expected. As Oakland’s first-round pick in the 1980 NFL draft, he backed up Jim Plunkett in the Raiders’ 27-10 victory over Philadelphia in Super Bowl XV.
Two of his 60 NFL starts came in the middle of 1983 season before a broken left shoulder sidelined him for the rest of the year — or so he thought. Prior to his injury, Wilson also was the holder for Chris Bahr’s extra points and field goals. With him out, NFL Hall of Fame punter Ray Guy stepped in. Guy could punt better than anyone in the game. However, holding for kicks just wasn’t his thing.
As Wilson remembers, “We got into the playoffs and Chris went to the coaches and said, ‘OK, I don’t know what it’s going to take to activate Marc, but I’m not going into the playoffs with Ray Guy as the holder.”
Wilson was activated.
“I couldn’t even raise my left arm above my head, so the deal with the snapper was, ‘Listen, you can roll it back there, but you can’t snap it more than a foot off the ground because he (Wilson) won’t catch it.”
The now-Los Angeles Raiders and Washington advanced to meet in Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa, Florida, on Jan. 22, 1984.
Wilson was perfect on his end of Bahr’s five successful extra-point attempts during the Raiders 38-9 blowout victory, in a game remembered more for Apple’s commercial introducing the Macintosh computer than the one-sided score.
“It was so cool,” said Wilson, who finished his 10-year NFL career with 14,391 passing yards and 86 touchdowns. “I was tempted to call an audible and pass it so I could throw at least one pass in the Super Bowl, but the game was out of hand, and I didn’t think that would go over very well.”
New kid in town
Just as 110 players reported to BYU this week to start fall camp, Wilson made his Provo debut in August 1975.
“I was scared to death!” he said. “For one, I had never thrown a leather football. Growing up in Seattle, we used rubber balls. I hated the feel of these leather footballs. Just trying to get used to that was enough, not to mention that we had this offense to learn. It was nerve-wracking. It really was.”
Wilson didn’t suit up his freshman season and redshirted the following year. At some point during that second year, equipment manager Floyd Johnson tossed him a No. 6 jersey. Wilson asked him, “Why 6?” He had never worn that number in all his years of football.
“You are from Seattle, right?” Johnson asked.
“Yes.”
“There was a great player who played for the (Washington) Huskies, do you remember Sonny Sixkiller?” Johnson said.
“Yeah, he was our hero growing up,” said Wilson.
“Well then, you have to wear No. 6,” Johnson said.
Wilson’s number still honors Sixkiller, his beloved equipment manager who gave it to him, and his head coach as it hangs in retirement from the press box at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
The College Football Hall of Fame inductee knows how close it all came to ending on that day in Edwards’ office when he told the coach he was quitting — a decision that would have voided the consensus All-America honors, Sammy Baugh Trophy, NCAA and BYU halls of fame, and two Super Bowl rings from his life.
Instead, he listened, and the career that began with a rubber football in the streets outside Seattle, will forever be decorated in “legendary” status as a pioneer alongside Nielsen and Gary Sheide in the BYU Quarterback Factory that preceded McMahon, Young, Bosco and Ty Detmer. And now, in August 2022, 47 years after Wilson stepped onto campus, it’s Jaren Hall’s time to shine for Kalani Sitake, an Edwards disciple.
“LaVell was not very often wrong,” Wilson said. “He was a very, very smart, intuitive guy. He was very sensitive to his feelings about things and LaVell was, in most cases, always right and we could trust that.”
Dave McCann is a contributor to the Deseret News and is the studio host of “After Further Review,” “Countdown to Kickoff,” “The PostGame Show,” and play-by-play announcer for BYUtv. He is also co-host of “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com.
BYU quarterback Marc Wilson studies his receivers Dec. 8, 1979.
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