Wyoming
Wyoming Coach Knows Significance Of Hosting BYU In Laramie
LAS VEGAS — Two years ago, former Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl and then defensive coordinator Jay Sawvel were inside the visitor locker room at the home of BYU football, LaVell Edwards Stadium.
They were in Provo for the first matchup in a two-game series between the former conference rivals. The next meeting in the series was set for Laramie in 2024.
BYU won that meeting two years ago against the Pokes, 38-24.
BYU at Wyoming
📅: September 14, 2024
⏰: 7 p.m.
📺: CBS Sports Network
📻: @kslnewsradio #BYUFootball pic.twitter.com/EdUzckOLAV— Mitch Harper (@Mitch_Harper) May 30, 2024
In 2022, BYU was in its final year as an Independent while gearing up to join the Big 12 Conference.
BYU will play at Wyoming for the first time since 2009
So, from the Wyoming side, there wasn’t much faith that BYU would return to Laramie, a place where the legendary LaVell Edwards once said, “I’d rather lose and live in Provo than win and live in Laramie.”
To the surprise of many, BYU will travel to War Memorial Stadium in Laramie on September 14 for a 7 p.m. kickoff on CBS Sports Network and KSL NewsRadio (102.7 FM, 1160 AM). It will be the 80th meeting between the two programs.
BYU leads the series 46-30-3.
“Coach Bohl told me in the locker room there in 2022 that he didn’t think they would come back, that the return game would happen,” said first-year Wyoming head Jay Sawvel at Mountain West Media Days. “So obviously, it’s happening, and I don’t know whether [canceling the 2024 game] was discussed or not.”
Tom Holmoe stayed committed to playing in Laramie
While the Wyoming coaches had doubts about a return visit from their old rival, BYU AD Tom Holmoe doubled down on visiting Laramie in 2024 during the game two years ago.
“Yes, we are,” Holmoe said on the BYU Sports Network in 2022 when asked if BYU would make a return trip to Wyoming. “I like the interregional rivalry, old conference foes, and it’s just a game that I think we should be playing.”
The commitment to restoring an old rivalry adds another tough test for a BYU program looking to return to the postseason after an underwhelming 5-7 record in their first year as a power conference team.
BYU’s trip to Wyoming is one week after a road game at SMU in Dallas. After the Wyoming game, BYU jumps into a nine-game Big 12 schedule in what Brett Yormark calls the “Deepest Conference in America.”
2024 #BYU Football Schedule #BYUFootball #GoCougs #Big12 pic.twitter.com/gS3ymhypgZ
— KSL Sports (@kslsports) January 30, 2024
Last season, Wyoming was a 9-4 team that included a double overtime win over Texas Tech from the Big 12.
Laramie is always a tricky spot for any team. But for BYU? The intensity
Wyoming coach Jay Sawvel: “It’s a big deal”
Jay Sawvel, who was promoted to Wyoming’s head coach chair after Craig Bohl announced his retirement, knows what hosting BYU means for Wyoming.
“There are probably books that could be written about that. It’s a big deal,” Sawvel said on BYU-Wyoming. “It’s not lost on me as the head coach and going through all the different parts of the state, how big of a game that is for the Wyoming fan base. Maybe in part because [BYU] is not on any future schedule either. There’s a generation of Wyoming fans that this would be the last time they’ll ever see BYU in our stadium.”
The last time BYU traveled to Laramie was in 2009, when the two were in the Mountain West Conference together. BYU is on a nine-game winning streak against Wyoming. The last two wins were under the direction of head coach Kalani Sitake (2022, 2016 Poinsettia Bowl).
“They’ve got a great program, and Coach Sitake does a great job. It’ll be a big challenge,” said Sawvel.
There are no future meetings scheduled between the schools.
“Things are scheduled 10-12 years out. They’re not on anything,” said Sawvel. “So all of a sudden, you start looking at it, you could be looking at 2040 before they ever come back. I hope I’m alive by 2040. So, this is a big deal. It’s a big deal to the fans. It’s an old rivalry. There’s a lot of tradition to that. Our responsibility is to play for Wyoming that night.”
2024 BYU Football Schedule
August 31 – Southern Illinois
September 6 – at SMU
September 14 – at Wyoming
September 21 – Kansas State
September 28 – at Baylor
October 12 – Arizona
October 18 – Oklahoma State
October 26 – at UCF
November 9 – at Utah
November 16 – Kansas
November 23 – at Arizona State
November 30 – Houston
2024 Wyoming Football Schedule
August 31 – at Arizona State
September 7 – Idaho
September 14 – BYU
September 21 – at North Texas
September 28 – Air Force
October 12 – San Diego State
October 19 – at San Jose State
October 26 – Utah State
November 2 – at New Mexico
November 16 – at Colorado State
November 23 – Boise State
November 30 – at Washington State
Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for KSLsports.com and hosts the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (12–3 p.m.) on KSL Newsradio. Follow Mitch’s coverage of BYU in the Big 12 Conference on X: @Mitch_Harper.
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Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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