BYU hosts Notre Dame as Cougars chase signature win in the 1st top-10 game at LaVell Edwards Stadium
The buzz over this week’s top-10 matchup between No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 8 BYU was palpable in the Utah Valley long before the season started
The buzz over this week's top-10 matchup between No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 8 BYU was palpable in the Utah Valley long before the season started, and the teams are right where they were expected to be heading into Saturday's clash in Provo.
Notre Dame is 6-0 against the nation's 63rd-toughest schedule, according to ESPN's power index, and BYU is 5-0 against the 86th toughest.
Now comes the first real test for both.
For the Fighting Irish, this is the next step on the “Leave No Doubt” tour they began in response to being left out of the College Football Playoff after winning 10 straight following losses by a combined four points to two ranked teams. No. 3 Miami is waiting in three weeks.
For the Cougars, even though this is one game on one night in one season, it feels bigger than that. It will be the first top-10 matchup ever played at LaVell Edwards Stadium and a potential watershed moment for a program that's usually good, sometimes very good, but has found greatness elusive.
Yes, BYU was the national champion in 1984 as the only unbeaten and untied team in the country. Critics dismissed it, and still do, as the product of an easy schedule in the old Western Athletic Conference.
Six years later, the Cougars upset top-ranked and reigning national champion Miami 28-21 in a game that propelled Ty Detmer to the Heisman Trophy. “We wanted respect. I think we have that now,” Detmer said after the game. The Cougars lost to a middling Oregon three weeks later and the season ended with losses by a combined 82 points to Hawaii and Texas A&M.
In 1996, they won a school-record 14 games, but an early loss to Washington and that flimsy WAC schedule kept them out of the national championship conversation. They finished No. 5 in The Associated Press Top 25 and haven't appeared in the final top 10 since.
More recently, they opened 9-0 in 2024 and were in playoff contention until they lost at home to a 3-6 Kansas team and then at Arizona State. Last year, they were 8-0 and then lost a couple ugly games a month apart against Texas Tech, the first in Lubbock and the second in the Big 12 championship game.
Now, here they are again. A win over the Fighting Irish could help the Cougars get in the playoff as an at-large pick if they don’t win the Big 12 and, just as important, go down as the most impactful victory since the Detmer-led team knocked off Miami 36 years ago.
A loss to the Irish wouldn't end BYU's playoff hopes, not with the rest of the Big 12 schedule to play, but it would surely be another point of pain for a program that, aside from 1984, has come up short time and again.
Indiana was rewarded for its fourth-quarter comeback from 11 points down to beat Nebraska 20-17. The Hoosiers moved up two spots to No. 5, making Saturday's home game against No. 4 Ohio State the second top-five matchup of the season.
The Hoosiers were held by Nebraska to 65 yards rushing, converted just 1 of 10 third downs and, according to ESPN, they had won only one of their previous 122 games when entering the final quarter behind by double digits.
Coach Curt Cignetti was asked after the game how his team could play so poorly for most of three quarters and still pull out a win.
“You've got to have an indomitable will, man,” he said, “a will that cannot be defeated or subdued. And you've got to be resilient, have the ability to overcome the unexpected, and no matter how bad it gets, you never let anxiety, frustration enter your mindset. You're going to find a way. It’s just a matter of time.”
Kentucky went from unranked to No. 15 with its second straight one-point overtime win, a 35-34 victory over then-No. 10 LSU in Lexington. It was cause for celebration, and Big Blue didn't hold back. Fans stormed the field.
The bill came Sunday when the Southeastern Conference announced Kentucky would be fined $500,000 for a violation of the league’s access to competition area policy due to fans entering the field following the game. The fine will be paid to LSU because it is a SEC member. For nonconference games, fines are paid to the SEC's Post-graduate Scholarship Fund.
Georgia, which replaced Texas at the top of the AP Top 25 after beating Alabama 20-17, has been ranked No. 1 in at least one poll five of the last six seasons. ... Texas' loss to Oklahoma was the first by a No. 1 team against an unranked opponent since Alabama lost to Vanderbilt in 2024. ... In the Top 25 era, there have been 11 games where an unranked team beat the No. 1 team. Only four times did the unranked team make the rankings the following week, most recently Texas A&M entering at No. 21 after beating Alabama in 2021. ... Oregon, which dropped out of the Top 25, had its streak of 70 straight poll appearances end.
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