Coastal Carolina Beats Brigham Young in Battle of College Football Undefeateds

Brigham Young University’s football team has had a storied history dating back to the 1920s. The Cougars had great success back in the days of the old Western Athletic Conference and later in the Mountain West Conference. The 1984 Brigham Young Cougars were 13-0 and won the National Championship (when it was defined by the polls in the pre playoff days). Since 2011, BYU has operated as Division I independent.

Coastal Carolina, on the other hand, has only had a Division I football program since 2003, and was a FCS team until becoming an FBS team in 2017 as a member of the Sun Belt Conference. The Chanticleers (according to the school’s athletics website, a chanticleer “is a proud and fierce rooster who dominates the barnyard” and is from a story in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) are based in Conway, South Carolina.

As it turns out, the two teams were both 9-0 entering the first weekend of December, with BYU ranked #13 in the AP Poll with Coastal Carolina #18. Coastal was supposed to play Liberty over the weekend, but that school had to cancel due to Covid. BYU was available, and the matchup in Conway was put together at the last minute, with both teams looking to improve the quality of the bowl games they would be invited to with a victory.

This one went down to the wire. The Chanticleers rushed for 281 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Cougars 22-17. But it was Coastal’s defense that saved the day when safety Mateo Sudipo stopped BYU receiver Dax Milne just short of the end zone on the final play of the game.