SEATTLE — The two letters were stitched into their jackets, a simple yet significant proclamation of what the 1984 Washington Huskies believed themselves capable of achieving.
“NT.” National Title.
The Huskies ended the 1983 season in disappointing fashion, losing to Penn State in the Aloha Bowl to finish 8-4. But Jim Rodgers, a junior safety on that team, remembers thinking even then that 1984 could be special. The Huskies had a Week 2 date with Michigan in Ann Arbor, but if they could get past the Wolverines, they figured the schedule set up well for an undefeated season.
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“Coach (Don) James always called the captains in, and to my recollection, the four captains sat down in Coach James’ office,” Rodgers said. “We all had the same goals — win the Pac-10, win the Rose Bowl. And we said, ‘Screw that, let’s win the national title.’ Our mantra was ‘NT’ for national title. We never said it with media or anybody, just among us teammates.”
“We went into spring ball,” linebacker Joe Kelly said, “knowing that we were going to win the national title. We said it — ‘NT.’ We put it on our shirts. We put it on our hats. We put it on our jackets.”
They nearly pulled it off. Just not in the way that any of them envisioned.
No, the Huskies did not win the Rose Bowl that season. They didn’t win the Pac-10, either. But they did win 11 games, beat Oklahoma in the school’s lone Orange Bowl appearance and force one of the closest final votes in the history of The Associated Press Top 25 poll, narrowly missing out on a much-debated national championship that instead went to unbeaten BYU.
At that time, the Huskies never had played BYU. They’ve faced them 10 times since, a competitive series that UW leads 6-4. But for fans of a certain age, these semi-frequent matchups with BYU conjure memories of the first time these programs clashed — in the polls, that is, nearly 35 years ago.
With Washington (2-1) preparing for a Saturday game at BYU (2-1), we step into the past, and examine a wild season that saw the Huskies come up just short of a national title.
Through nine games, it appeared the Huskies might fulfill their “NT” prophecy. They were unbeaten and untied — including a 20-11 victory at then-No. 3 Michigan in Week 2 — and had spent four weeks at No. 1 in the AP poll. A Nov. 10 trip to No. 14 USC and a trip the following week to Washington State were all that stood between UW and a Rose Bowl bid — and a shot at a 12-0 finish and near-certain national championship.
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But the dream died that November day in Los Angeles, the Huskies ceding a 7-0 halftime lead in an eventual 16-7 defeat. The Trojans hadn’t yet lost a conference game, meaning their win over UW clinched the Pac-10 championship (USC did lose the following week to UCLA, which wound up beating Jimmy Johnson’s first Miami team in the Fiesta Bowl). Forget about the national title — the Huskies were looking at a 10-1 regular season with no league title and no major bowl. And that was only if they could recover in time to beat WSU, which had lost just two league games by a combined five points.
Don James spent 18 seasons as Washington’s coach. The 1984 Huskies won 11 games for James, a figure topped during his tenure only by the 12 victories in 1991. (Courtesy of Washington Athletics)Asked what it might take to rally their spirits in time for the Apple Cup, linebacker Tim Meamber told The Seattle Times after the USC loss: “I don’t know what it’s going to take. Right now, I just know there’s 60 guys in the locker room … that the last thing on their minds is Washington State.”
The defeat so devastated the Huskies that James did something out of character the night before the Apple Cup. Gary Pinkel, then in his first season as UW’s offensive coordinator, remembers Huskies coaches receiving word that if they beat WSU, they’d have a shot at being invited to the Orange Bowl — an unprecedented postseason opportunity for a Pac-10 team.
It was unlike James to mention such things to his players. He typically wanted them focused on the next game and nothing more. But the USC loss had really taken something out of them, and it hadn’t been a great week of practice. So he passed the Orange Bowl rumor along to his players at their final team meeting before the Apple Cup.
“That immediately lifted everybody,” Pinkel said. “I think the light started shining a little bit for everybody. That was unusual for Coach James to do something like that. That wasn’t normal. But that’s just his brilliance — he did it at the right time for the right reason.”
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The Huskies erased a 26-16 second-half deficit to win the Apple Cup 38-29. An AP story published two days later listed Washington, South Carolina and Doug Flutie-led Boston College as finalists for the Orange Bowl’s at-large bid, with the Big 8 champion guaranteed the other spot. But BC was destined for the Cotton Bowl, and South Carolina had botched a sure Orange Bowl invitation by losing to unranked Navy.
Eight days later, the Orange Bowl made official what had been rumored all week, formally inviting No. 4 Washington to face No. 2 Oklahoma (9-1-1) in Miami on New Year’s Day.
As consolation prizes go, this was a good one. UW athletic director Mike Lude told the AP, “If someone said, here are all the bowls, other than the Rose, and it was our choosing, we’d take the Orange.”
(For what it’s worth: It’s been reported in the past that UW turned down an invitation to face BYU in the Holiday Bowl, though it’s unclear if a formal invitation was extended. A Holiday Bowl spokesperson told The Athletic that UW was one of many teams suggested as an opponent for the WAC champion Cougars, but that the Huskies made it clear they preferred an Orange Bowl bid and thus never were formally invited.)
The opportunity to face a highly ranked Oklahoma team in a major bowl on national TV was motivation enough for the Huskies, most of whom had by that point dismissed the notion of winning a national title.
“I didn’t even think about it,” Rodgers said. “I really didn’t. Some guys did. All I wanted was to beat Oklahoma. That’s the best I could do, right? In my opinion, we lost to USC, so we didn’t have the perfect season. So let’s just win the game.”
But a small chance existed that UW might ascend to No. 1 under the right circumstances. BYU was their primary competition. The top-ranked Cougars were 12-0 and WAC champions for the ninth consecutive season under legendary coach LaVell Edwards, and were slated for a matchup with 6-5 Michigan in the Dec.21 Holiday Bowl.
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Some grumbled about BYU’s strength of schedule, a chorus led most publicly by Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer, who used the lead-up to the Orange Bowl to lobby for his team to be voted national champion, should it beat the Huskies. “Today Show” host Bryant Gumbel famously remarked of the Cougars, “Who’d they beat, Bo Diddley Tech?” UW coach Don James mostly avoided the debate, going only so far as to say he believed BYU and the winner of UW-Oklahoma would be the most deserving teams.
Robbie Bosco was at the controls of a prolific BYU offense in 1984. He threw 33 TD passes as the Cougars averaged 35.1 points per game, which ranked second nationally. (George Gojkovich / Getty Images)Here’s how Blaine Newnham, a longtime columnist for The Seattle Times, summarized the perspective of the college football establishment in a November 1984 column published under the headline, “Does BYU deserve No. 1? Michigan has the answer.”
“Bo Schembechler and his Michigan Wolverines never have had so many fans rooting for them — all the major bowls, the television networks, the major conferences, almost everyone outside the state of Utah,” Newnham wrote.
Count the Orange Bowl among that crowd. Nick Crane, head of the game’s selection committee, told Newnham, “We’re going to claim the national championship for the winner of the Orange Bowl, and I think NBC will hype it that way, too.”
Narratives began to form. Some believed BYU needed a lopsided victory in the Holiday Bowl to secure its No. 1 ranking. A different narrative suggested either UW or Oklahoma needed a lopsided victory in the Orange Bowl to leapfrog the Cougars in the polls — but those who believed the Sooners could jump to No. 1 didn’t necessarily believe the same of Washington.
“The chatter amongst the writers of America was that if Oklahoma beat us, they were going to crown Oklahoma No. 1,” Huskies wide receiver Mark Pattison said, “but if we beat them, then there’s this big debate. I don’t understand that logic even today.”
This became the subject of an NBC-TV survey, which asked a handful of AP voters which team they might rank No. 1 in different scenarios. The Seattle Times published it the day before the game with an ominous headline, “Poll says there’s little chance UW will be No. 1.”
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Of the 58 voters polled, 17 said they’d vote for BYU no matter who won the Orange Bowl, while 28 said they’d vote for Oklahoma if the Sooners beat the Huskies by two or more touchdowns. Only 16 voters, though, said they’d rank UW No. 1 if it beat Oklahoma by two or more touchdowns. The majority of those polled believed Oklahoma would defeat BYU head-to-head (by a tally of 30-19, with nine undecided). The same number of voters believed No. 5 Nebraska also would defeat BYU, and even more voters (36) thought No. 3 Florida, who was on probation and couldn’t go to a bowl, would beat the Cougars, too.
The voters didn’t view Washington the same way. By a vote of 27-21, with 10 undecided, the majority of those polled believed BYU would win a game against the Huskies, which might have explained why they weren’t as inclined to vote UW No. 1 even after if they won the Orange Bowl.
Still, BYU’s dramatic 24-17 victory over Michigan in the Holiday Bowl did little to stem the debate. Would voters punish the Cougars for only narrowly defeating a Michigan team that finished 6-6? At least one local columnist, the Times’ Steve Kelley, believed they would, writing the next day that “BYU won the Holiday Bowl and probably lost the national championship.”
Switzer, though, figured BYU’s unbeaten record would be enough, telling the AP more than a week before the Orange Bowl that he figured the Cougars already had No. 1 locked up.
Others weren’t so sure.
“I can speak to two things — my own opinion and I can speak to my sense of the opinion of others,” UW quarterback Hugh Millen said. “My sense about what we thought, collectively, is that we thought we had a really good chance.”
The Huskies might not have been thinking about winning the minds of AP voters, but they played like it early in that Orange Bowl, racing to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. The Sooners tied it by halftime, and nearly took the lead on a field goal early in the fourth quarter before one of the most bizarre moments in college football history: The field goal was nullified by a procedure penalty, and Oklahoma was assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on top of it because its famed Sooner Schooner got stuck on the field.
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UW blocked the ensuing 42-yard field goal attempt, and Millen came off the bench to throw two fourth-quarter touchdown passes to lift the Huskies to a 28-17 victory, by any measure one of the biggest wins in program history.
In a jubilant locker room afterward — captured on live TV — UW players touted their merits as potential national champions.
“We read all week, no matter what happens, if Washington wins, they can’t win the AP sportswriters’ poll,” Meamber shouted above the din. “Well, that’s just fine because I think most of these sportswriters never played a down of football in their lives. The one poll I want to get is the coaches’ poll. They know who’s No. 1. They know who had the hardest schedule between BYU, Oklahoma and us. They know who dominated the game today.
“I take nothing away from BYU. They’re a great football team. They did go undefeated. I think they should get one, and we should get one.”
“Even if they don’t vote us No. 1,” linebacker Fred Small chimed in, “we know we are No. 1. Oklahoma knows we’re No. 1, too.”
In that moment, Rodgers was more diplomatic: “I don’t care how they vote us. We’re 11-1. We won the Orange Bowl. We did the best we could.”
The scene in Oklahoma’s locker room, obviously, was more subdued. But Switzer stuck to his script, interrupting a TV reporter’s question about the national championship before he could even finish it. “Washington’s the best team in the country,” Switzer said. “They’re the best team we’ve played this year.” (Here is Oklahoma City TV video of Barry Switzer explaining the Sooner Schooner penalty and who was No. 1.)
All lobbying was proven moot. The Huskies finished No. 2 in both polls. The AP poll had a slim margin — 1,160 points for BYU and 1,140 points for Washington, the Huskies receiving 16 first-place votes to BYU’s 38. Not since the 1961 season had the final poll offered such little delineation between No. 1 and No. 2.
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Beating Oklahoma, it turned out, wasn’t enough. At least a few players were sure it would be.
“I assumed that because we lost to USC, we would have to split it with Florida,” linebacker Joe Kelly said. “Never did it cross my mind that they would give BYU a national championship. That wasn’t even on my radar.”
Many, though, anticipated this result, even if the oh-so-close final margin made it a little harder to swallow.
“The fact the vote was so close probably had us all going, ‘Dang, we were right there,’ ” offensive lineman Dennis Maher said. “I don’t think we went into that game thinking we really had a shot to win the national title.”
Jacque Robinson was the Orange Bowl MVP, rushing for 135 yards and a TD as the Huskies upset Oklahoma. He had 14 rushing touchdowns that season. (Courtesy of Washington Athletics)“From my standpoint, it was a bummer we weren’t voted No. 1, but we pulled off an amazing accomplishment,” Pattison said. “The rest was out of our control. Although a bummer, I don’t think there’s any bitterness.”
Would the 1984 Huskies have welcomed a chance to compete for the championship in a playoff? You might assume so, but opinions differ. James, for what it’s worth, was a steadfast opponent of implementing a playoff, even after the Huskies came up short. If BYU’s No. 1 ranking bothered him, he didn’t much show it.
“You know what I would really like?” James remarked in the early-morning hours after UW’s Orange Bowl victory, according to the Times. “I’d like BYU to be voted first in one poll and for us to be voted first in the other. Then we could both celebrate, and buy national championship rings.”
James’ chief disappointment following the release of the final poll was that six writers cast a first-place vote for Florida (9-1-1), which won the SEC but was ineligible for the postseason. The coaches had agreed not to vote for a team on probation, James said, and he had hoped writers would follow suit: “It’s not fair to vote for a school that is in absolute violation of the structured rules we’re supposed to live with.”
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As for finishing second, James said, “I’m not going to jump off a damn roof. I already sold myself on the fact I’m so proud of what this team did that I’m not going to hang my head.”
UW players were a bit more expressive.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we’re the best team in the country,” tailback Jacque Robinson told the Times back then. “BYU’s not in the same class or league with us. They’re like a Double-A school. We’re Triple-A.”
“I wish we could have played BYU,” center Dan Eernissee said at the time. “I wish they’d played some better teams so they could have proved something, rather than just muddying the waters.”
“We would have crushed them at the time, in that day, with that team that we had,” Pattison said this week. “I’m 100 percent confident in that.”
Pinkel, too, thinks Washington had as strong a case to be No. 1 as any team. But it’s not what he remembers most from that season.
“If you had 100 football coaches just do the math, it would be hard to say that we should not have been No. 1, just based on who you play and things like that,” Pinkel said. “But with Coach James, we didn’t do that a whole lot. You face it like it is. If we’d have beat USC, we’d have won the whole thing. It was a great year, and we were very fortunate to finish as strong as we did.”
Rodgers might not have given it much thought at the time — he was so beat up by that point, he said, that he was just glad to be done playing football — but the passage of time has allowed him to reflect.
“Now that I’m 57 years old? Yeah, BYU did not deserve it,” Rodgers said.
But he doesn’t hold it against the Cougars. He says he enjoys watching Trevor Matich, the starting center on that BYU team, as an analyst on ESPN, and can appreciate what his perspective might be. “What did he do? He just beat everybody they put in front of him,” Rodgers said. “Can’t ask much more than that.”
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The Huskies nearly did the same, and the NCAA record book does acknowledge that three so-called “major selectors” — Clyde Berryman, Football News and the National Championship Foundation, which split it between the Huskies and BYU — recognized UW as national champions. Aside from the AP and coaches’ polls, eight others crowned BYU. Seven picked Florida, and one chose Nebraska.
“If there was one more game after the bowls, no matter what process you had, whether it’s a subjective vote or computers or whatever, the outcome would have been BYU plays Washington,” Millen said. “They deserved to get a chance to play us, but we certainly would have loved to have played them.”
The outcome was emblematic of a season that did not produce a clear-cut, runaway champion. Bill Connelly analyzed the 1984 national title debate at SBNation, concluding that Washington may have had a legitimate gripe but that BYU’s schedule wasn’t quite as soft as some claimed and that “no one else deserved it either.”
It’s a reminder of just how much things have changed in the 35 years since, and the subjectivity involved when humans must choose between two (or more) potential champions who didn’t play each other. UW supporters will contend the Michigan team they beat in Week 2 was far stronger than the Michigan team BYU played in the Holiday Bowl. Edwards noted BYU’s consistency: Oklahoma and other contenders had losses to teams they’d likely beat more times than not, but the Cougars had no such slip-ups.
Who doesn’t enjoy a good debate, anyway?
“We didn’t get the perfect ending,” Rodgers says now. “But sometimes people like the stories that aren’t perfect.”
(Top photo of Don James: Bernstein Associates / Getty Images)
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