BYU: Football or Basketball School?
 

I post this in the "other college sports" category because I want a fair shake for both sides.

I sat in on a sport history seminar this week, and one of the assigned books dealt with amateur basketball in the Rocky Mountain region during the 1940s and 1950s. The professor (not LDS, but familiar with LDS culture since he taught at Weber State in the '90s) went off on a little tangent about how basketball is still king throughout the mountain west - at places like New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, and BYU. He then went on about BYU and said, aside from their football successes in the '80s, BYU was and most definitely is a basketball school, going back to the 1960s. I was surprised by his adamant tone. I consider myself a bystander to BYU sports, but I was curious what the faithful would say.

I don't think there's any doubt that BYU is a football school, not there can be an objective analysis. LES seems to sell out more often than the MC, at least.

That professor doesn't know what he's talking about.

I think it depends on how old you are. Stan Watts and BYU basketball was king many, many years before Lavell came to coach in Provo. The tide has definitely turned but it was a basketball school.

Yeah, I'd say basketball school, even through the 70's, but once the 80's came and Ainge left, football all the way. The prof needs to visit the intermountain west at least once every 20 years.

Until St. Lavell arrived BYU was a basketball school.

Answer: when BYU football travels, we get thousands that go the away games. When BYU basketball travels, people check the internet for some updates.

I honestly cannot name one player on our basketball team.

Isnt one kid named Trent Plaisted? The tall guy? I think that is his last name.

football, but not the crappy kind they've played the last 2 weeks

Football
 

and quite honestly it is not even close anymore. It was a basketball school until the late 70's. Football took over and it has never looked back. I think that by now BYU has been a Football school for even longer than it was a basketball school.

In fact I bet BYU came closer to capacity at football games in 2002-2004 than it did for hoops. Those hoops teams were far better basketball teams than the football team.

Nobody knows who Dave Rose is in Provo, Elder Mendenhall on the other hand......

. . . . is God.