The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football

by Jeff Benedict

  WSU never recovered. Van Noy ended up with four solo tackles, two sacks, one pass breakup and three hurries. WSU ran the ball sixteen times for a total of minus five yards. Leach’s offense reached the red zone just one time the entire night. The final score was 30–6.

  Leach removed his headset and stood in silence on the sideline as his team and assistant coaches headed to the locker room. It wasn’t supposed to begin this way.

  Two weeks later, BYU traveled forty-five minutes north to face Utah. It marked the eighty-eighth time the two teams had squared off in a rivalry known throughout college football as the “Holy War,” a reference to the vastly different cultures represented by two schools where the majority of students were Mormons. But the rivalry had taken on a nastier, personal tone since the 2005 season, when Bronco Mendenhall and Kyle Whittingham were named head coaches at the two schools within days of each other. In head-to-head competition, Whittingham had beaten Mendenhall four out of seven times in what Sports Illustrated’s Stewart Mandel called the best coaching rivalry of the decade.

  There were parallels to the heated rivalry between Notre Dame and Miami in the 1980s, when Notre Dame fans printed infamous T-shirts that said, “Catholics vs. Convicts,” helping fuel a pregame brawl and finger-pointing between the teams’ head coaches, Lou Holtz and Jimmy Johnson. Things got so ugly that Notre Dame fans complained of being spit on and having beer poured on them by Hurricane fans at the Orange Bowl. The longtime Notre Dame beat writer Tim Prister described the atmosphere at the Orange Bowl as “nastiness” and “evilness,” adding, “It was the most vile, vicious venue for a college football game that I’ve ever been in. They weren’t there just to see Miami win. They wanted blood from Notre Dame.”

  Things were headed that way in Utah, especially after a dramatic BYU comeback in 2007, highlighted by a dramatic fourth-and-eighteen catch by future NFL receiver Austin Collie. “Obviously, when you’re doing what’s right on and off the field, I think the Lord steps in and plays a part in it,” Collie said afterward. “Magic happens.”

  Two years later BYU won 26–23 in overtime, thanks to a touchdown pass by Max Hall. “I don’t like Utah,” Hall said after the game. “In fact, I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate their program. I hate their fans. I hate everything. So, it feels good to send those guys home.” Hall apologized the next day but insisted that his “family was spit on, had beer dumped on them and were physically assaulted on several occasions” at Rice-Eccles Stadium a year earlier.

  Van Noy wasn’t around back then. But as BYU’s brightest star, he endured the wrath of Utah fans as he and his teammates entered Rice-Eccles Stadium in street clothes to make their way toward the visiting locker room on September 15, 2012. The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” was playing on the stadium’s sound system. A guy waving a Utah flag leaned over a railing separating the bleachers from the field to greet the Cougars. “Welcome to hell, boys,” he said.

  “You assholes,” another shouted.

  His earbuds in, Van Noy didn’t hear any of it. That night he had one of the best games of his college career, chasing Utah’s quarterback all over the field. “Fuck you, Van Noy,” one boisterous Utah fan yelled from behind BYU’s bench after Van Noy threw Utah’s quarterback to the ground, registering his fourth sack.

  While Van Noy shone, Utah built a seventeen-point lead going into the fourth quarter. But with under thirty seconds to play, BYU had cut the lead to three and was nearly in position to kick a game-tying field goal. Then, with time running out, quarterback Riley Nelson’s third-down pass was deflected and fell incomplete as time expired. Utah fans rushed the field, taunting BYU players. The scene on the field quickly became chaos. But Bronco Mendenhall protested that one second remained on the clock when Nelson’s pass hit the turf. After officials reviewed the play, they restored one second to the game clock while boos and expletives rained down from the stands. Thousands of fans had to be cleared from the field so BYU could attempt a fifty-one-yard field goal. The kick was blocked. By the time a BYU player recovered the ball and was tackled behind the line of scrimmage, Utah fans had rushed the field again. This time Utah players joined fans as they rushed toward BYU’s side of the field, finger-pointing and celebrating. But there were penalty flags, and Utah was assessed a fifteen-yard unsportsmanlike conduct because the fans had run onto the field during the play. As the penalty was announced, BYU fans returned the favor, pointing and ridiculing Utah players and fans.

  Calm amid the swirl, Van Noy stood on the sideline, helmet tucked under his arm, silently looking on as security cleared Utah fans from the field a second time and officials marked off the penalty. Then BYU lined up again to attempt a game-tying field goal, this time from thirty-six yards out. The kick hit the upright. Utah held on 24–21. Fans rushed the field a third time. Police had to step between as Mendenhall went toe-to-toe with a heckler as the Cougars tried to get off the field.

  “I hate losing,” Van Noy said, standing in the back of the end zone as Utah fans celebrated all around him. “I hate losing more than anything. I hate losing at tic-tac-toe. So words can’t describe how I feel right now. But win or lose, I’m grateful to be part of this university. I’m grateful to be alive. That’s all that matters. Not many people in the world get to know what it’s like, playing the game of football.”

  Later, a BYU official led Van Noy to the postgame press conference.

  “Talk about that finish,” a local reporter said. “Was that as crazy as anything you’ve been a part of?”

  “In my life?” Van Noy said, flashing a smile. “No.”

  “On the field?” the reporter said.

  “Yes.”

  Through the first three games of the 2012 season, Bronco Mendenhall used Ziggy Ansah as a situational player, mainly as a defensive end or an outside linebacker in passing situations. In every case, his instructions were simple—get the quarterback. But in week four, everything changed. Early in the game at Boise State, noseguard Eathyn Manumaleuna, the Cougars’ best defensive lineman, sustained a season-ending injury.

  When the Broncos recovered a fumble on BYU’s one-yard line with 8:19 remaining in the third quarter, Mendenhall sent Ziggy in to play nose-guard. Boise State had no scouting report on No. 47 as a noseguard; Ziggy had never played the position. He introduced himself immediately. On first and goal Ansah exploded out of his stance and met running back D. J. Harper just as he took the handoff, stuffing him for a one-yard loss. On second and goal Harper got the call again, and again Ansah beat his man, dropping Harper a yard behind the line. Van Noy made a tackle behind the line of scrimmage on the next play. The Cougars ended up taking over on downs.

  That goal-line stand erased any questions BYU coaches had about Ziggy’s ability to stop the run. Ansah ended up with a career-high eight tackles. The next week against Utah State he started, recording two sacks and two quarterback hurries. From then on Mendenhall started him in every game. Playing every down, he became a nightmare for opposing offensive coordinators. After just four starts he led the team in tackles for a loss, and he was tied for twenty-fifth in the nation with tackles behind the line of scrimmage. NFL scouts who were watching Van Noy started noticing Ansah. After Ansah had another monster game against Georgia Tech on October 27 in Atlanta, Sports Illustrated’s NFL draft expert predicted Ansah could be a first-round pick.

  By that point, NFL scouts were showing up at BYU practices. They were already very familiar with Van Noy. They were pleased to discover that Van Noy and Ansah were roommates. “Another thing he has going for him is that his roommate is Kyle Van Noy,” one NFL scout said. “He’s living with the other best player on the team. They are best friends. We see that as a good thing. When you’re checking the boxes for what he has going for him, that’s another plus.”

  Mendenhall was floored. “If anyone knew where he started, I can’t even articulate the jump he’s made,” he said. “This is a guy who literally didn’t know how to put on his pads. Now he’s pr
ojected as a first-round draft pick. We’ve had more NFL personnel in our facility this year than in my previous eight years put together. This is a guy I never took seriously.”

  Part IV, The letter

  On November 1, 2012, President Elson Floyd and the Washington State University Board of Trustees received a disturbing letter via e-mail. It came from the parent of a football player who had recently left the team. “As stewards of WSU you have a responsibility to make sure the athletes are not getting mistreated by their coaches,” the letter began. “I feel that Coach Mike Leach and his staff are out of control.”

  The parent named eighteen scholarship players in addition to his son who had left the program since Leach arrived. Player abuse, the parent insisted, was behind the departures. The letter specifically cited “Midnight Maneuvers,” punishing players for missing off-season “voluntary” workouts and forcing players to do drills that were more demanding than those required in military boot camps. In one instance, the letter alleged, offensive linemen were forced to do drills in a sandpit after performing poorly in a game that WSU had lost. “Players were made to hold 45-pound plates over their heads while coaches sprayed water in their faces with water hoses,” the parent wrote, adding that Coach Leach had instructed players not to talk to their parents or the administration if they had concerns about the way the program was being run. “I would expect WSU to investigate these allegations which I know to be true,” the parent continued. “WSU has an obligation to protect these young men.”

  Floyd was uneasy. The letter was a scathing indictment of the football coaches. Granted, the claims had come from a parent whose son had no chance of seeing any playing time and ultimately quit the team. Floyd learned that context from athletic director Bill Moos. Still, if only half of his accusations were true, WSU had a problem on its hands. Worse, the letter dredged up reminders of Leach’s infamous departure from Texas Tech. The situation could not be ignored.

  But Floyd had no interest in micromanaging the football program. Nor did he want to undermine his athletic director. Moos had hired Leach. If legitimate questions arose about Leach’s fitness for the job—and the claim that players had been hosed while being forced to carry forty-five-pound plates through a sandpit certainly raised a red flag—Moos was the one who needed to get to the bottom of the situation.

  Yet the letter had been addressed directly to Floyd and his board. Some trustees were uncomfortable. The board’s chairman, Scott Carson, had plenty of experience dealing with crises. He had previously been the executive vice president of the Boeing Company, as well as the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. A letter from a student-athlete’s parent alleging abuse had to be taken seriously. In talks with Floyd, Carson recommended a series of steps.

  First, the letter required a response from the athletic director.

  Second, the letter should be referred to the appropriate board committee for further review and possible action.

  Third, the AD needed to brief the board on the situation within the football program.

  Floyd passed all of this on to Moos.

  When Bill Moos read the parent’s complaint letter, he looked at the situation through the lens of a football coach as well as an athletic director. From that perspective, he knew it was not out of the ordinary to hear complaints from parents—including complaints about their sons’ treatment. Unlike those running the university, Moos had played big-time college football. He knew the sort of discipline and hard-nosed approach required to compete. It is, after all, football, not the glee club. Oregon, USC and UCLA were pushing their players to the brink. If WSU hoped to compete with those teams, players had to be pushed just as hard.

  Moos was also pretty familiar with the eighteen players who had already left the program since Leach arrived. Five of them were kicked off the team for breaking the law. “The pot smokers and thieves aren’t going to make it in Leach’s program,” Moos said. “Two of those guys that he cut were linebackers that were NFL caliber.”

  The fact that Leach had cut two of his best players for breaking the law was a good sign as far as Moos was concerned. A couple other players were let go due to substandard academic performance. Others quit or were let go due to the stepped-up conditioning and high expectations. All of this, as far as Moos was concerned, was simply part of the process of rebuilding the program. “Anytime you are in transition, you have defections,” he said.

  Before speaking with Floyd, Moos called Leach into his office to discuss the letter. Leach was very familiar with the player whose father wrote it. The abuse claims, he said, were ridiculous. But he wasn’t necessarily surprised that the student-athlete’s father had complained. Not every student-athlete is cut out for the rigors of Division I college football.

  At the same time, Leach preferred to deal with the situation right away. His team was 2-6 and had dropped five straight in the Pac-12. He was trying to get the team ready to play Utah, one of the few teams on WSU’s schedule that was struggling. WSU was scheduled to fly to Salt Lake City the following day. He had a lot to do to get ready.

  “You want me to call him right now?” Leach asked.

  Moos liked the idea.

  Leach called his former player’s father on the spot. Stunned, the parent spoke his piece. Leach listened and then did the same. After the call, Moos reassured Leach and told him to focus on Utah.

  Marquess Wilson was not happy. Two weeks earlier he left the Cal game after taking a hard hit in the end zone. The following week he lost his starting position to a freshman. When Leach announced the starting lineups for the Utah game, Wilson was once again relegated to second string. He still ended up leading the team in receptions and yardage. But Washington State lost to Utah 49–6. WSU’s only score came on the game’s final play, a meaningless five-yard touchdown pass. The loss dropped WSU to 2-7, guaranteeing a losing season and snuffing out any last hope of getting a bowl invitation.

  Leach was pissed. Losing was one thing. But playing without heart was another. Above all, Leach valued effort. He didn’t see much of that in Salt Lake City.

  “Our effort today was pitiful,” Leach said in his postgame press conference. “Square one is a good effort and our effort was horrible.”

  The Utah game was by far the worst loss of the season. WSU had been beaten badly in every facet of the game, especially along the line of scrimmage. The defensive line got pushed around all day. The offensive line gave up six sacks. A reporter asked Leach about the lack of protection for his quarterback.

  “A part of it is effort, and some of it borders on cowardice,” Leach said. “It was one of the most heartless efforts up front I’ve ever seen. And our D-line wasn’t any better.”

  Typically, reporters get postgame interviews with a couple of players after hearing from the coach. But Leach was in no mood for protocols. He sent out the entire offensive line and defensive line. Battered, humiliated and feeling out of place, the linemen looked blankly at a bank of reporters who were equally unsure about what to say. Finally, questions trickled out.

  Defensive end Logan Mayes stepped up. “Everybody on this team works hard,” he said. “We just couldn’t get it done at the end of the day. There’s no lack of want-to on this team. Sometimes you want something really bad and you don’t get it. We’re all going to go back and work our asses off this week and find a way to get it done.”

  Senior Travis Long, the team’s best defensive player and its hardest worker, suddenly bolted out of the press conference. He appeared to have tears in his eyes.

  The whole scene was surreal. “In four decades of covering the conference, I’ve never seen anything like it,” wrote the Seattle Times’s veteran sports columnist Bud Withers.

  The atmosphere on the plane ride back from Salt Lake City resembled that of a funeral home. It was late at night by the time the team touched down in Pullman. Leach told his staff not to go home. He wanted to talk to them at the football office.

  Tired and in a foul mood, the coac
hes trudged into a meeting room. Leach vented. The assistants vented. The season had reached a low point. With just three games to go, there was nothing left to play for but pride. But the team had clearly lost its confidence. There was disagreement over how to restore it. The next day was a Sunday, typically a light practice day. The coaching staff decided to scrap practice and put the team through conditioning drills.

  The following afternoon, the players were divided into groups and sent to one of four conditioning stations. Marquess Wilson was in the group that started in the sandpit, where players were required to sprint, roll and do bear crawls on hands and feet through forty yards of sand. Wilson didn’t see the point. About fifteen minutes into the session, he walked off the field. He didn’t say a word to the coaches. He had had enough.

  Wilson was the best receiver in the school’s history. Yet from the moment Leach arrived, it seemed as if he had been openly critical of Wilson’s effort, suggesting he needed to toughen up and become more of a leader. Wilson didn’t appreciate it. He didn’t take well to some of the physical demands either, stuff like making receivers run twenty-five hundred yards per practice. Even NFL teams don’t do that. Plus, he had lost his starting position—a move the coaches hoped would send a message to the star player that he needed to pick up his effort.

  After Sunday’s practice, Leach discovered that Wilson hadn’t just walked off the practice field. He had cleaned out his locker. The next morning the school announced that its star player had been indefinitely suspended for violating team rules.

  Hours later, Wilson’s stepfather in California called Moos. He recognized the gravity of the situation and wanted to resolve it. He asked Moos what he could do to help.

  “You tell him to come see me,” Moos said.

  The next day Wilson showed up at Moos’s office.