Historical tidbits to kick around

This week is so full of information about this rivalry. I’m working on a Thursday column right now about one aspect of it and I’ve got to file a story for a special section today that won’t come out until Saturday morning.

In the meantime, here’s a few items from Dave Schulthess, the longtime sports information director t BYU, a guy who held that position first and for the longest time.

Cactus Jack Curtis in his first year at the University of Utah in 1950 said if we lose to BYU, I’ll ride a jackass back to El Paso…the score was tied at the end of the game, 28-28… The score by quarters of that game was 0-8-7-14-28 for Utah and 7-7-7-7-28 for BYU.

One of the quarterbacks for Utah that year was Mitt Smith, son of Joseph Fielding Smith, who later became President of the Church…then Elder Smith and his wife would show up early at games and that year he sat with his back against the press box, facing into the sun on the field where the Richards Building is now.

Also on the 1950 team on the BYU side was Rod Long, father of UNM’s Rocky Long, and Ned Alger who ended up as Utah’s assistant AD, and Rex Berry. Cactus Jack Curtis was the coach at Texas Western (UTEP) before coming to Utah.

In 1953 NBC did a Thanksgiving Day telecast of the BYU-Utah game which many thought would be a real turkey, with Lindsey Nelson calling the play-by-play nationwide. The dull ball game turned into a real doozer with 60 million fans viewing this contest, the first national TV coverage of a sporting event in the intermountain area. Utah won the game, 33-32. The right end on that BYU team was Paul Mendenhall, father of Bronco.

In 1942 the year BYU beat Utah for the first time, BYU lost it’s final four games of the season to end with a 2-5 record.

Of note, I have a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune sports page from that 1942 game. It was very entertaining and also had headlines about “The Japs” doing some bombing. I got the copy from Heber Wolsey, who was at that game, and used to work for LDS public relations during the Spencer Kimball era after he worked at BYU.

The game story was written by the late John Mooney.

If anyone knows a good way to frame that so it would be protected from the air and elements, please let me know.