Oregon offensive coordinator Gary Crowton recognized the possibility late in the season.
In the same weekend his Ducks lost 37-10 at home against Arizona causing them to slide further down the Pac-10 standings, Crowton’s former team, BYU, defeated New Mexico 42-17 and immediately accepted a bid after the game to the Las Vegas Bowl, which selects the fourth or fifth-place Pac-10 team.
After another Oregon loss to Oregon State the following week, the matchup came to fruition last Tuesday: The Ducks and No. 20 Cougars would meet Dec. 21 in the 15th-annual Las Vegas Bowl.
“It’s come up in the paper in Utah first before it came up here because they knew they were going to that bowl game and they knew we were a possibility,” Crowton said. “I’ve just been trying to concentrate on the season and not on that. I didn’t want to waste energy on something that may not happen. Now that it’s here, I’m just going to deal with it, and I’m excited that we’re going to play them.”
Crowton served four years, from 2001-04, as head coach at BYU. He went 12-2 in his first year, won a Mountain West Conference championship and earned conference coach of the year behind an offense that ranked first in the nation with a 542.9 yards per game average.
The good times ended there.
After three straight losing seasons and a 26-23 overall record, Crowton, a BYU graduate in 1983, was forced to resign while Oregon parted ways with offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig, now at Utah. Months after his departure from BYU, Crowton was hired in 2005 by the Ducks.
Two years into his tenure in Eugene, Crowton is set to meet his former team.
“I really, really cared for those kids when I was there, and I’m really happy for their success,” said Crowton, whose severance from BYU ended last month. “But I really love the ties I have with these guys (at Oregon).
“I’m going to do the best I can to keep my emotions out of the game.”
With his intimate knowledge of the program, Crowton figures to be an instrumental part in Oregon’s Las Vegas Bowl preparations on both sides of the ball. He recruited many of the current upperclassmen and even hired current coach, Bronco Mendenhall, as his defensive coordinator for the 2003 and 2004 season.
Mendenhall and Crowton talked after the bid was officially announced and “had a good laugh about it.”
“I usually talk to Bronco once or twice a month,” Crowton said. “He’s a good man.”
BYU and Mendenhall are coming off a 10-2 season and a Mountain West Conference championship. Quarterback John Beck, who started for Crowton part-time as a freshman and full-time as a sophomore, leads the high-powered Cougars’ offense, which ranks fifth in the nation in total offense. He has 30 touchdown passes this season to just six interceptions and is second in the country in passing efficiency.
Crowton once declared that Beck would be “one of the all-time leading passers in BYU history” and after this season, that assessment looks accurate.
“A lot of people laughed at me when I said that because they’ve had some great ones there,” Crowton said. “But I really believed he would be that. If you look at his numbers, I’m sure he’s right up there.
“I have a sense of pride in the fact that I felt that team was going to be a really good team when those guys got to be juniors and seniors. So it’s good to see them go 10-2 because I expected them to do that whether I was there or not. I was excited about that. Now from the other standpoint, we want to win that game because my loyalties now are to this university.”
Crowton’s Ducks are hoping to end a three-game losing streak on the season and a three-year postseason losing streak dating back to the monumental Fiesta Bowl win in 2002.
“I feel like our players are ready to make a statement and this is a tremendous opportunity to finish this season in a strong manner but even more so to jump start next season,” Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said.
Despite three straight losses, the Ducks can take a bit of confidence from their performance in the second half of the Civil War, coming back from a 21-7 deficit before falling 30-28.
“This game’s got a lot to do with our whole year,” Oregon safety J.D. Nelson said. “It’s a statement game. There are two roads we can take. We can go out and be that team that turned the ball over and didn’t play good run defense or we can be the team that showed up that second half and played near lights-out football against Oregon State.”
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