1984 revisited: Mark Bellini was in right place at right time in ′84

Editor’s note: Sixth in a series exploring BYU’s 1984 national football championship.

BYU’s fourth-quarter rally to beat Michigan in the 1984 Holiday Bowl had a lot to do with sophomore receiver Mark Bellini, even though the winning touchdown receptions were caught by two of his teammates.

Trailing 17-10, quarterback Robbie Bosco marched the Cougars to the Wolverines’ 7-yard line. The play call from the sideline was “Red. Left. Switch. Zing 62. Z-corner.” Bellini was the Z receiver.

“This was such a great play for us inside the 20. We ran it all year,” Bellini said. “I’m in the slot running a corner route to the end zone. (Glen Kozlowski) looks at me. He knows the ball is going to the corner and he wants me to switch with him. I shook him off, so he grumbles into the X position — which never gets the ball on this play.”

Bosco took the snap and backed up.

“Michigan dropped back into a zone, and I wasn’t open,” Bellini said. “Robbie started scrambling around and found Kozlowski in the back of the end zone.”

Kozlowski made a circus catch and managed to keep one of his feet in bounds for the touchdown to tie the game.

“If I would have let him take that play from me like he wanted, he wouldn’t have been in the back of the end zone to make that catch,” Bellini said, feeling justified for holding his ground. It wasn’t the first time the three-year starter tried to muscle away pass routes from the youngest player in the rotation.

“Koz was always trying to take my plays,” Bellini said laughing. “A big play would come into the huddle for me and Koz would say, ‘I’ll take this one.’ Earlier in the season, we broke the huddle and he looked at me, and I said, ‘No.’ But he came over anyway and we lined up at the same spot on the field. Robbie is looking at us and we are out there fighting. He shakes his head and yells, ‘What are you guys doing?’”

Earning his keep

Bellini redshirted the 1983 season and entered BYU’s championship year with just two receptions for 10 yards from his freshman campaign. He quickly earned his keep with six receptions for 141 yards during the Cougars’ 38-15 win against Tulsa on Sept. 15.

Walking off the field, Bellini knew he had arrived.

“I’m here. I made an impact. I’m part of this now,” he remembered. “The fact that I was a walk-on made it even bigger. The coaches didn’t know who I was when I first got there. They wanted me to play defensive back.”

Bellini caught 35 passes during the 1984 regular season for 572 yards and four touchdowns. Four of those catches came in BYU’s 24-14 victory at Utah. The win was sweet, but the ride home was even better.

“We were on the bus back when no one had a cellphone and the internet wasn’t around,” Bellini said. “Someone on the bus had a radio. We were listening to the Nebraska-Oklahoma game.”

BYU began the day ranked No. 3 in the polls. Navy had already upset No. 2 South Carolina and when the No. 1 Cornhuskers fell to the Sooners, everybody on board knew what it meant.

“We are just going crazy on the bus. We were jumping around, and the bus was shaking as we drove down I-15. The driver was probably scared to death,” Bellini said. “It was such a fun moment because we knew at that point, we were going to be the No. 1 team when the new polls came out.”

LaVell’s advice

The Cougars carried the top ranking into the Holiday Bowl, where LaVell Edwards’ pregame pep talk filled Bellini with confidence.

“He just kept telling the players, ‘We just have to win the game. All you need to worry about is winning the game.’ He believed if we won, we would be the national champions — and we believed him,” Bellini said. “One thing we had in our favor was LaVell was loved by everybody. I think that really helped us.”

With the game tied at 17 late in the fourth quarter, BYU began its final drive and when play caller Norm Chow called for “Red. Left. 63.” Bellini knew Bosco was coming to him.

“This was our bread-and-butter play. It was the same one Adam Haysbert scored on to beat Pittsburgh in the first game of the season,” Bellini said. “Normally we run the deep cross over the middle and another receiver runs a post behind it.”

The 5-foot-11 San Leandro, California, product, including all 180 pounds his body had to offer, was running the deep cross when Bosco hit him on second-and-9 at the BYU 35 with 3:34 to play. Bellini picked up 20 yards and the Michigan defender grabbed his facemask while making the tackle.

“With the catch and penalty, it turned out to be a (big) gain,” Bellini said. “That was a key play on that drive.”

Six plays later, Bosco connected with Kelly Smith in the end zone to defeat the Wolverines 24-17 and secure BYU’s undefeated season and eventual national championship.

Life of a champion

“I still can’t put it into words,” Bellini said of the accomplishment. “It was so amazing. The dream came true exactly as we had hoped it would.”

Amidst the on-field celebrations, Bellini was struck by the magnitude of the moment for reasons other than the final score.

“I came in (to BYU) as a nonmember and I joined the church there,” said Bellini, who finished his Cougars career with 146 receptions for 2,429 yards and 23 touchdowns. “To me, I thought it was super cool that we were kind of putting the church on the map. If you wanted to know who I was most happy for, it was the church. We are not supposed to be a football powerhouse. We are a church school from Utah. That was one of the coolest aspects of the whole thing.”

Bellini was baptized three months after taking down Michigan. He and his wife, Michelle, have six children and two grandchildren. They reside in Ojai, California, where Bellini is a biologist. For 40 years now, wherever he has gone, BYU’s national championship has gone with him.

“It’s awesome. No one can take it away from you. Everywhere you go, people know you are a part of that. It’s made my life more fulfilling,” Bellini said. “As great as it was, it was still just a football game. It’s not your life. It doesn’t define you. In the bigger picture, joining the church has been more important to me than winning that football game — as great as it was.”