BYU football’s original first team All-American Eldon Fortie passes away at age 79

Legendary BYU football All-American Eldon “The Phantom” Fortie passed away Tuesday in Mesa, Arizona. Born May 21, 1941, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Fortie was 79 years old. 

Fortie started three seasons at tailback for BYU from 1960-62. As a senior in 1962, he led the Western Athletic Conference in rushing, total offense and scoring. For his success on the field, Fortie was named WAC Offensive Player of the Year and became the first Cougar to be named first-team All-America. 

He was selected to play in several all-star games after his senior season, including the North-South Bowl, the Hula Bowl, the All-American Game and the Coaches All-American Bowl. Later that year, the university retired his No. 40 jersey — the first jersey ever retired at BYU.

In 1963, Fortie played a year of professional football for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League. He was inducted into the BYU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1977. He and his wife Janice were married for 59 years and had five children. 

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During the fall of 2010, I had the pleasure of interviewing nearly 60 former players, coaches and administrators for a historical book on BYU football — among them was Eldon "The Phantom" Fortie. 

We spoke for over an hour. He was gracious, thoughtful, humble and engaging. Below is an excerpt from the book “What It Means To Be A Cougar” with Eldon sharing his experience at BYU in his own words.  — Duff Tittle

ELDON “THE PHANTOM” FORTIE
Tailback | 1960-62

As kid, I had always wanted to go to the Y. For some reason, in the back of my mind, that’s what I wanted to do. It was a thrill to get the opportunity to do something that you’ve always wanted to do, and then to be somewhat successful was like a dream-come-true.

I never played organized football until I got to be a sophomore in high school. I attended ninth grade at Granite Junior High, which was on the same campus as Granite High School in Salt Lake City. Granite had just hired a young coach out of the military. I used to go to their practices and chase balls, catch punts, haul things around, whatever I could do to just be on the field with the high school football team. 

Then as a sophomore I got a chance to play for Granite and the new coach. His name was LaVell Edwards. Even as a young high school coach, LaVell had a real impact on everyone he came in contact with. I’ll never forget the first practice. They gather all the sophomores together and asked, “Is there anyone here who can play quarterback?” I jumped up and said, “I can play quarterback!” I’d never played it before except in sandlot games. The coaches said, “All right, get in there and play.” 

One of the assistant coaches was Rex Olsen, who had played quarterback for BYU. He taught me how to throw the ball correctly. LaVell was a great coach to play for. He had a huge influence on all of us. The way he influenced us the most was by setting an example. 

My junior year I started as a defensive back. That’s how I broke into the first string. I also played a little defensive back at the Y years later. My senior year we lost three or four games by a total of one or two points each. We were quite unlucky, but we had a good time and learned a lot about life, and that’s really what counts.

I lettered in basketball and track as well in high school, but football was my best sport. Some schools started to show interest in me about the middle of my senior year. Utah State invited me up with some other recruits for a recruiting weekend. After that I never heard from them again. Then the University of Utah invited me to a dinner, but it got canceled for some reason. After that I never heard from them either. 

Talley Stevens was the head coach at BYU. He really did a good job of recruiting the in-state kids that year. Bruce Samples from Ogden was all-state and Bill Wright from West High was a really good running back. We all chose to go to BYU. When we got to the Y we played on the freshman team that first year. The freshman squad didn’t play very many games that year, only a handful.

Coach Stevens was the head coach during my sophomore year in 1960. I got to play a little bit of quarterback, but mostly safety on defense. I liked offense better because I figured I could do something about the score of the game. After my sophomore year the school let Tally go and named Hal Mitchell the new coach. 

He had run the single-wing formation as a player at UCLA under Red Sanders. So, my junior year we switched to the single-wing and I became the starting tailback, which is the quarterback in that offense. It’s similar to what some teams run now from the shotgun with a running quarterback. The tailback was about four or five yards deep, got the direct snap, and could run and throw. That’s what we ran. 

A funny story that I remember from that year was playing a game without facemasks. We lost the season opener in 1961 by a point to San Jose State. For some reason, Hal Mitchell decided that if he and players from his era could play football without a facemask that we should be able to do the same. Maybe he figured that somehow playing without a facemask would make us tougher. 

The next game was at West Texas State, and Hal had Floyd Johnson, our equipment manager, take all the facemasks off our helmets. Once you’ve played with a facemask it’s kind of hard to take it off. So we went down to West Texas State without facemasks and got beat 55-8. It was unbelievable. Of course, when we got back Floyd had to turn around and put all the facemasks back on our helmets the day after we got home. I’m sure he was burning the midnight oil to get that job done. I’ll tell you what—we never took off the facemasks again after that.

In 1962, Hal hired LaVell Edwards to join his staff. LaVell likes to tell the story that the only reason he was hired by BYU was because he was the only Mormon in the state of Utah who knew how to run the single wing. There might be some truth to that, but in any case that’s how I was reunited with LaVell. 

My senior year we opened at Pacific, and we didn’t sync right that first game. Then we went to Arizona and should have won that game, but we lost 21-27. We had the ball on their 2-yard line, and we ran our best play where I went off-tackle on the right. I just didn’t get in the end zone. It ended up costing us the conference championship. We finished second behind New Mexico.

I have a lot of fond memories of playing football with that group of guys. We only had one returned missionary and two married guys on that team, so it was an entirely different demographic than BYU has today. The prevailing thought among coaches back then was that returned missionaries don’t make good football players. They’re not tough enough. 

That carried on until LaVell took over and said, “Hey, we’ve got to maximize the talent we’ve got with these returned missionaries.” I believe one of the reasons he turned the program around is he started to recruit returned missionaries and encourage young men to serve. 

I get asked occasionally about the game I had against George Washington my senior year. It was raining as I recall. We didn’t have a problem moving the ball, but we just couldn’t get in the end zone. I’ll always remember a block that Lloyd Smith made in that game. I had broken through the line, and Lloyd came from his left end spot and laid out the defensive back. It was just a perfect block. I cut behind Lloyd and ran it for a 75-yard touchdown. The crazy thing about that game is I rushed for 272 yards and we still got beat 12-13. It was terrible.

During my career at the Y, I set 25 school and conference records, and everything else has been broken. That single-game rushing record has stood for nearly 50 years, which I find amazing. Note: Fortie’s single-game rushing record was finally broken in 2016 by Jamaal Williams who rushed for 286 yards against Toledo.

I started to lead the nation in total yardage at about that time of the season. A sportswriter from the Deseret News covering BYU said in an article, “He runs like a phantom.” From then on the nickname just stuck. I became Eldon “The Phantom” Forte.

At the end of the 1962 season, I got a phone call to let me know I had been named an All-American. I couldn’t believe it. Then sure enough, one of the All-America teams was announced. Then other teams started coming out and I was on those too. To be the first Cougar to be named first-team All-America is something that I’ve always treasured. At halftime of a basketball game the university retired my jersey. President Wilkinson was there and actually presented it to me in a glass case. It was fun—a great memory. 

To me, as I look back, it’s the friendships that were formed and the people I met that are the most important things. There were a lot of great people at BYU. When I was playing high school football you had Glen Tuckett at West, LaVell at Granite, and Talley Stevens at East. They were coaching against each other, and eventually all three ended up at the Y as coaches. Glen was one of those exceptional, extraordinary people who you run across every now and again in your lifetime. He had a tremendous influence on me and countless other athletes at BYU.

I’m not there locally now, but I still follow the program from a distance. Certainly, there’s a sense of pride that you played a small role in building the football program early on. There has to be, because the program has done so well over the years. I love the tradition. Anything that involves the Y, I’m excited about. 

There’s just something about being from the Y that brings everybody together. Anybody who’s from BYU has a unique commonality. We have a togetherness that is quite unique. Wherever we’ve moved, there’s been friendship and commonality because of the Y.