Courtesy BYU Photo

Most of the young men who played for BYU in the 1980 Holiday Bowl are in their 60s now.

That’s a sobering thought for Cougar fans who remember attending or watching the game thereafter known as the “Miracle Bowl.”

Vai Sikahema was still a teenager, a precocious freshman who returned a punt for a touchdown in that game against SMU. Now, he’s a General Authority Seventy for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“Wherever I go, nobody 40 years old or less has any reference point to the Miracle Bowl,” Sikahema said. “There are more and more stake presidents in their 40s and a lot of them don’t even know I played football. But there are always those who are in their mid-50s and over and I can tell by that look they give me, they remember the Miracle Bowl and they want to talk about it. It never fails.”

The story of that December night is oft told: The 20-point deficit with four minutes to play, quarterback Jim McMahon refusing to leave the field when coach LaVell Edwards sent in the punt team on fourth down, the unbelievable comeback and the miraculous catch by Clay Brown in the end zone as the clock expired.

Mark Philbrick/BYU Photo

Oh, yeah, and Kurt Gunther’s extra point with no time on the clock, the winning score in a 46-45 BYU victory.

The Cougars and Mustangs meet in Saturday’s New Mexico Bowl, two football programs that have followed vastly different roads since the Miracle Bowl. BYU won a national championship in 1984, traversed the Western Athletic Conference, the Mountain West Conference and independence before getting a coveted invitation to join the Big 12 beginning in 2023.

SMU was handed the so-called “Death Penalty” in 1987 by the NCAA for a boatload of pay-for-play infractions (many of which are standard operating procedure in today’s name, image and likeness era) and had its football program suspended for two years. Since their return in 1989, the Mustangs have played in the Southwest Conference (which collapsed in 1995), the Western Athletic Conference, Conference USA and the American Athletic Conference. SMU hasn’t been nearly as dominant as they were in the 1970s and 1980s.

Sikahema’s journey after the Miracle Bowl included a two-year church mission to South Dakota, then a return to BYU where he finished his college career with a then-NCAA record 153 punt returns. He became the first Tongan to play in the National Football League (1986-93) with stops in St. Louis, Green Bay and Philadelphia that included two Pro Bowl appearances. After his football playing career, Sikahema became the sports director at NBC-10 TV in Philadelphia. He retired in 2020 and was sustained in his current church assignment in April of 2021.

“Maybe my greatest gift in that I can re-invent myself,” he said.

Mark Philbrick/BYU Photo

Sikahema said the Miracle Bowl was a constant companion during his NFL career. He played with former SMU legend Eric Dickerson in two Pro Bowls. The outgoing Dickerson would often walk into the locker room before practice and boom “Where’s Sikahema?” to talk trash about the Miracle Bowl.

“It was always funny,” Sikahema said.

Eagles teammate Wes Hopkins was a defensive back for SMU in that game and is one of the three Mustang players surrounding Brown on the famous catch in the end zone.

“Every single year that was the baseline of my relationship with Wes,” Sikahema said. “We always had fun with it. We would jaw back and forth and it was hilarious.”

Dickerson and Eric James were the “Pony Express” backfield at SMU and combined for 335 rushing yards against BYU. Dickerson — inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1999 — told Sikahema about a player named Charles Waggoner, one of four freshmen (along with Dickerson and James) in the 1979 recruiting class.

“Dickerson always said Charles was the best of them,” Sikahema said. “He played at Dallas Carter High School and had beaten out Dickerson and James their freshman season. But he hurt his neck on a kickoff return early in the year and never played another down.

“Eric always told me, ‘Vai, that guy (Waggoner) would have been an All-Pro,'” Sikahema said. “That always just added to the legend for me.”

BYU teammate Tom Holmoe, now the school’s director of athletics, once told a story about he and his friends roaming San Diego after the game and pulling into a convenience store on a junk food run. The clerk was watching a replay of the game on TV but didn’t know it was a replay. BYU was behind by 20 points and Holmoe bet the clerk $20 the Cougars would come back and win. Holmoe went on to predict every moment of the game — the onside kick recovery, the blocked punt, the last play — much to the astonishment of the clerk.

“That guy looked at me like I was Nostradamus,” Holmoe said.

Holmoe eventually told the clerk he had played in the game and couldn’t take his $20.

That’s a quaint story in today’s social media overload environment, where a Hail Mary finish in a football game is instantly on everyone’s cell phone, smart watch, tablet and computer.

Back then?

The game was televised on something called “The Mizlou Network,” not exactly a household name in 1980. It was also broadcast on KSL Radio, which at 50,000 watts could sometimes be heard quite a distance from Salt Lake City.

Sikahema said he drove home after the Holiday Bowl to Mesa, Ariz., with some of his high school buddies.

“We’re driving through San Diego listening to the local radio,” Sikahema recalled. “Everyone was calling in and saying, ‘Did you hear what happened in the Holiday Bowl? Watch the highlights!’ People just couldn’t believe what had happened. Me and my friends, we were all still buzzing. None of us could believe what we had just seen and that as an 18-year old kid I played a role in it.”

Sikahema said when he and his friends finished their eight-hour drive to Mesa he donned his BYU gear and did a glory walk through the local mall.

“I was just being obnoxious, saying, ‘That’s right, we’re BYU,” Sikahema said. “It was the most amazing thing.”

Sikahema also remembers a special tribute to the football team held at the Marriott Center at the start of winter semester. Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, the first counselor in the church presidency, was the master of ceremonies.

“They replayed clips of the game and different players came up to tell everyone what happened,” Sikahema said. “President Hinckley wasn’t really a sports guy but he just loved recounting the highlights.”

The team received gifts, Sikahema recalled, one of them a cassette tape player.

Earlier this year, Sikahema shared with the BYU football team a conversation he had with another general authority, Elder M. Russell Ballard.

“He told me the church missionary program is so much more effective when the football team is winning,” Sikahema said. “Elder Ballard told me, ‘People don’t care to listen to losers. So tell them to win.'”

Sikahema spends time at church headquarters in Salt Lake City and said there is a small area where the general authorities often gather to eat lunch.

“Quite a few members of the Quorum of the 12 and other general authorities love sports and they love the BYU football program,” Sikahema said. “Even some of them that are University of Utah fans talk about football with me.”

Conversation invariably turns to the Miracle Bowl, a timeless topic Sikahema is only too glad to continue.

“It was just the greatest thing,” Sikahema said. “As time passes there have been other big games for BYU, other monumental games in our history. But the Miracle Bowl set the stage for the coming years.”

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