Free spirit stuck in BYU doghouse

By Ron Kantowski

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts.

Fruit Loops and chocolate syrup.

A plaid shirt with a striped tie.

Jim McMahon and Brigham Young University.

Some things are just not meant to go together.

It has been 27 years since the punky QB known as McMahon threw the last forward pass of his senior year for BYU, after which, depending on whom you talk to, he either was immediately kicked out of school or left just as soon as he could.

“Happiness was Provo in the rearview mirror,” McMahon said in his autobiography.

That was in 1986. That was a long time ago. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge. Some of it may even may have wound up in a certain beverage that McMahon likes to drink when he’s playing golf.

So many years have passed, so many beverages consumed on the golf course, that a person very close to Jim McMahon said it’s time the quarterback and his alma mater patch their differences, extend an olive branch, share a beverage on the golf course — even if it’s a 7-Up.

That person lives on the No. 3 hole at the Oasis golf course in Mesquite. His name is James F. McMahon — Jim McMahon Sr.

The punky QB’s old man.

Jim McMahon Sr. forwarded to the Sun a copy of a letter he wrote to Tom Holmoe, the BYU athletic director, asking the school to induct his son into its Hall of Fame and to retire his jersey. Because he is generally considered the greatest among all the great quarterbacks who have played at BYU — sorry, Ty Detmer — that seems only fitting.

Fitting, regardless of how many beers Jimmy — which is what his dad still calls him — might have consumed on the golf course, how many times he put a pinch of smokeless tobacco between his cheek and gum, and the one time he looked at Provo in the rearview mirror with glee.

Regardless of how many credits he lacks to graduate.

That last one seems to be the biggest obstacle. Jim McMahon never graduated from BYU. Wasn’t allowed to. Or didn’t want to. One of the criteria for Hall of Fame consideration at BYU is that athlete-students graduate. That’s right, athlete-students. To refer to them in the other order would be as hypocritical as looking the other way while your star QB commits Honor Code violations because damn — er, darn — he sure can throw the football on Saturday afternoon.

Not that he wants in, but those nine credits — three classes — are what is keeping Jim McMahon out. That, and the beers he drank on the golf course when people made excuses for him — I mean, weren’t looking.

“Like I said in the letter, I’ve been biting my tongue for 27 years,” Jim McMahon Sr. said in a telephone conversation on Monday, five days before UNLV will visit BYU in a game that probably won’t be anywhere near as interesting as this one-man campaign he’s mounting on behalf of his son.

He says Jim doesn’t want him to lose any sleep over it, that he should just let it go. But he can’t let it go. He’s stubborn, just like his son was in the 1980 Holiday Bowl. BYU trailed SMU’s Pony Express 38-19 midway through the fourth quarter when LaVell Edwards, the venerable BYU coach, gave up. He wanted to punt the ball back to Eric Dickerson and Craig James. But his son wouldn’t allow it. He literally refused to leave the field.

If you get ESPN Classic, you know the rest of the story. How BYU trailed 45-25 with 4:09 to go, before Jim McMahon engineered arguably the greatest comeback in bowl game history, completing a 46-yard Hail Mary pass on the last play of the game to provide the Cougars with a thrilling 46-45 victory that still resonates today.

Jim McMahon Sr. is 72. He’s in good health, but he’s not getting any younger. There’s 4:19 to go, and he’s down by three touchdowns. That’s why he’s writing letters to Holmoe and sports writers. It’s getting late, but there’s still time.

Holmoe, believe it or not, is sympathetic. Maybe it’s because he can read the record book, too. More likely, it’s because he played alongside McMahon at BYU. He knows how great he truly was.

“He played a big part in what BYU is doing today,” Holmoe told the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. “Rules are rules, and I didn’t make them, but it’s a hard thing not to see him in there. I love the guy. He’s a great friend.”

When this story hit the Salt Lake City papers, it attracted hundreds of e-mail responses, the majority of which seemed to side with McMahon. He should take a couple of correspondence courses, finish his degree online, like a lot of people do, wrote fans and foes alike.

Or, considering all of his charitable work over the years — Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Hands Across America, Special Olympics, POW-MIA, Children’s Hospitals, Cystic Fibrosis, Children’s Miracle Network (national sports chairman), Society to Prevent Blindness ... the list, like a BYU rout of Wyoming, goes on and on — others believe the school would be justified in awarding McMahon an honorary degree.

Don King, the boxing promoter, has an honorary degree from multiple universities — and he once was convicted of second-degree murder.

Jim McMahon Sr. doesn’t believe the graduation stipulation — the McMahon Rule, some have called it — is what is keeping his son from being honored by the school he helped put on the map.

“When he was recruited, the coaching staff assured me and my family that even though he was not a Mormon, he would be treated fairly,” he wrote in the letter. “Obviously, that was a lie.”

Although Jim McMahon’s mom, Roberta, is Mormon and his wife, Nancy, is Mormon (they met at BYU), Jim was raised Catholic.

His old man said Jimmy was nothing more than a typical college student who could throw the heck out of a football, and he’s probably right about one thing.

“If he would have gone to Notre Dame, he would have won the Heisman Trophy two years in a row.”