LARAMIE – Jay Sawvel and the Pokes are admittedly frustrated.
 
Wyoming's first-year head coach understands his team did not rise to the occasion at Arizona State and made some costly mistakes in the home opener against Idaho.
 
Sawvel remains confident that if the Cowboys raise their level of play to meet the moment and execute in crucial situations the dissatisfaction from an 0-2 start can turn into collective euphoria this Saturday night at War Memorial Stadium.
 
BYU will be back in town for the first time in 15 years.
 
"This is a special game, really, when you get down to it for our players, for our program, for the state," Sawvel said. "They're not on any future schedule. I don't know when they (will) ever come back to War Memorial Stadium. I think because of that this will obviously be a big deal to everyone in the state of Wyoming."
 
Beating the Cougars has been consequential for UW coaches for over 100 years.
 
During the 1922 season, John Corbett's Cowboys were 0-8 until blanking BYU 13-0 in the season finale for the program's first victory in the series. After five consecutive losing seasons, UW notched its first-ever win in Provo, 13-7, on the way to a 6-4 finish in 1931 under John Rhodes.
 
The two programs were in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference together from 1922-37 before continuing the rivalry in the Skyline/Mountain States Conference (1938-61), Western Athletic Conference (1962-1998) and Mountain West (1999-2010).
 
UW was 0-6-1 in the seven previous meetings before Bernard "Bunny" Oakes' squad won the 1942 game, 13-6. The Cowboys did not play football from 1943-1945 due to World War II.
 
Bowden Wyatt (1947-52) went 4-1-1 against BYU, including a 48-0 victory in Provo during the 10-0 finish in 1950 capped with UW's first bowl game (a 20-7 win over Washington & Lee in the Gator Bowl).
 
Phil Dickens (1953-56) was a perfect 4-0 against the Cougars, including a thrilling 7-6 win in Provo to put an exclamation point on another 10-0 season. Bob Devaney (1957-61) was 4-0-1 against BYU and won four consecutive conference titles before leaving for Nebraska.
 
Lloyd Eaton continued UW's dominance by posting a 6-1 record against BYU during his first seven seasons while winning three consecutive WAC championships (1966-68) and appearing in the 1967 Sugar Bowl.
 
But the Black 14 incident before the 1969 game sent the program into a spiral and changed the tenor and trajectory of the rivalry.
 
Eaton dismissed UW's 14 Black players from the team for asking to wear black armbands during the home game with BYU to protest a policy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which they considered to be racist.
 
"That's why it was so tragic what happened to us," John Griffin, one of the 14 players booted by Eaton, said in the book Black 14: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Wyoming Football. "Had that team remained intact, we not only would have won the WAC in '66, '67 and '68, it would have been the same in '69, '70 and '71.
 
"There was nothing stopping us, and being as good as we were, we could have attracted even better athletes."
 
After UW went 19-3-2 against BYU from 1946-69, the Cougars won 14 of the next 17 meetings.
 
However, the Cowboys' 34-29 win in Provo in 1976 en route to the Fiesta Bowl and the 33-20 upset in 1981 during a blizzard in Laramie are two memorable games for fans of the brown and gold.
 
The Cougars had a five-game winning streak in the series before Paul Roach took over as head coach and guided the Pokes to wins in 1987 (29-27 in Provo) and 1988 (24-14 in Laramie) during back-to-back WAC championship seasons in which UW went 23-5 overall and 16-0 in conference play.
 
"It was just an unbelievable atmosphere. People were excited," Randy Welniak, the quarterback of the 1988 team, said of beating the nationally ranked and preseason WAC favorite Cougars in the first night game ever played at War Memorial Stadium. "To dominate them like we did … our defense was so good."
 
BYU responded by winning the next six meetings, including the dramatic 28-25 overtime win over UW in the inaugural WAC championship game in 1996 when the Cougars were ranked No. 6, and the Cowboys were ranked No. 22 in the Associated Press poll.
 
Dana Dimel's 1999 team won the first meeting against BYU as members of the MW, and Joe Glenn's 2003 team pulled off a 13-10 win, which was the last time the Pokes prevailed in the series.
 
BYU won the last seven games as conference rivals before leaving to play as an independent following the 2010 season. The Cougars also defeated the Josh Allen-led Cowboys in the 2016 Poinsettia Bowl (24-21) and won the previous meeting in 2022 at LaVell Edwards Stadium (38-24).
 
Saturday's game, the 80^th all time between the programs, will be BYU's first as a member of the Big 12.
 
"Not only are you playing an old rival, you're playing a really quality opponent at home," Sawvel said. "That makes it a big deal."
 
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