1984 NCAA Division I-A football season

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 1984 NCAA Division I-A football season saw an aerial attack (in a college version of the West Coast offense), as undefeated Brigham Young won the national championship as decided in an unanimous AP Poll. The Cougars were led by LaVell Edwards who was one of the best coaches in college football history.

The 1984 national championship is somewhat controversial as BYU played in a supposedly weaker conference, and prior to the advent of the BCS, BYU was contractually committed to play in the Holiday Bowl as the Western Athletic Conference champion. Both Washington and Oklahoma were invited to play against BYU in the Holiday Bowl, but both declined. Washington, whose only loss came in a last-minute decision vs. Southern California, ended up at #2 after defeating Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. While Washington had the opportunity to compete for the national championship title, it opted for the more lucrative Orange Bowl instead. Early in the following 1985 season, BYU pummelled Washington 31-3.

Some critics of the Bowl Coalition and its successors (the Bowl Alliance and the Bowl Championship Series) claim that in the wake of BYU's win, the larger conferences felt that their dominance was being threatened. Thus, these conferences agreed among themselves to create exclusive bowl bids for the national championship to prevent a repeat of other teams like BYU. Critics consider this exclusion was made with the intent of adversely affecting recruitment to excluded conferences and to create a de-facto two-tier Division I-A conference system. Since the implementation of the biased bowl bids, five unfavored conference Division I-A teams have finished the regular season undefeated (Tulane in 1998, Marshall in 1999, Utah in 2004, and Boise State in 2004 and 2006) without being given an opportunity to win the title, making it practially impossible for an unfavored conference team to compete for the national title regardless of their achievements on the field.

The season was also famous for the Boston College v. Miami game, in which Doug Flutie threw a Hail Mary pass to defeat the Hurricanes. Doug Flutie won the Heisman Trophy that year as well, and Boston College obtained a number 5 final ranking.