The wild year that changed the game for Mountain America executive Nathan Anderson

Watching BYU upset No. 1 Miami in 1990 was a dream come true for Nathan Anderson, a lifelong Cougars fan from Salt Lake County who was still settling into his freshman year on the Provo campus.

“It was pandemonium. To see that game and witness what took place was unreal,” Anderson told the “Y’s Guys” podcast recently. “I’ll never forget seeing Ty Detmer take a couple steps back and have two tackles for Miami run into each other. It was a lot of fun. We stormed the field!”

Rushing across Cougar Stadium with his roommates, and thousands of other revelers, was a far cry from months earlier when Anderson fastened on his chinstrap for the last time.

Basketball was his favorite sport at Jordan High, but at the coaxing of his friends, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound tight end decided to play football his senior year. The Beetdiggers marched into the state playoffs against Bountiful and that’s where the game, and nearly his life, came to an end.

Running a route over the middle, Anderson stretched his arms out to catch a pass, and the defender drilled him in the ribs.

“I got hit and went down. The hit knocked the wind out of me,” he said. “The coaches came out and helped me off the field.”

Two plays later, fueled by adrenaline, Anderson re-entered the game and caught another pass. But during the halftime break, his breathing turned laborious, and he felt winded.

Unaware of his condition, his coach said, “We have some rib pads for you to wear, and we will put you back in,” Anderson recounted.

Doug Toole lived in the area and as an NFL referee with a background in physical therapy, he tended to the team’s needs as a community service, almost like a sideline physician. Fortunately for Anderson, Toole spoke up.

“Timeout!” he said. “No, we are not going to do that. He can’t go back in.”

Anderson watched the second half from the sideline. After the game, his dad took him to the emergency room to get checked out. The doctors took X-rays of what Anderson figured to be cracked ribs.

“They told me, ‘No, your ribs are good.’ So, they were going to send me home.”

The situation caught the attention of Eric Anderson, a visiting surgeon from another hospital, who happened to be there that night.

“He took a look at things and said, ‘You know, I’m just not real comfortable with this. I want to go in and do a one-inch incision just to make sure everything is OK.’”

With the go-ahead, the one-inch incision turned into an 18-inch cut and the doctor’s inquiry revealed Anderson’s liver had burst and his spleen and kidney were lacerated.

“When they moved the abdominal muscle, blood went everywhere,” Anderson said. “Had I gone home, I would have gone to bed and not woken up because I was bleeding internally. Dr. Anderson did a great job saving my life.”

Anderson lost 25 pounds over 10 days and per doctors’ orders, his dream of being the next Chris Smith at tight end for Detmer and the Cougars was over. However, he still had high hopes to recover in time for basketball — but he needed help.

At the suggestion of a friend, Anderson and his dad traveled to BYU and they were introduced to iconic athletic trainer Floyd Johnson.

“What’s going on?” Johnson asked.

“This is what happened, and this is what I’ve been told,” Anderson replied. “I’m just trying to see if there is any way I can do something to play basketball?”

Johnson thought about it, got out his sewing machine and went to work. When the Andersons returned, the craftsman presented Nathan with a harness that included a one-inch foam pad around the rib section with suspenders over the top to hold everything in place.

Johnson said, “Here you go,” as he handed it to Anderson. “The only thing I ask is you bring it back when you are done.”

Hope had been restored, and loyalty was cemented.

“I was already a BYU fan, but to have somebody care that much about me and be willing to take their own time to do something to help me play the sport I loved was amazing,” Anderson said.

What happened next, however, was something neither Dr. Anderson nor Johnson could remedy. Anderson would have to face this challenge all by himself. The Beetdiggers reached the state semifinals against Emery High, which pitted him and his teammates up against BYU’s prized recruit 7-foot-6 Shawn Bradley.

To prepare his boys for the game, Jordan basketball coach Hal Hale went to extreme measures.

“He taped cardboard boxes to his hands, and he stood under the rim,” Anderson said. “He had us come in and he just swatted everything we tried to do to help us realize what it was going to be like against Bradley.”

Hale was right. Emery rolled to a 68-39 victory behind Bradley’s 24 points and five blocked shots, but Anderson was out competing on the floor, which was so much better than being helped off the field.

During that eventful and impressionable year, Anderson survived a life-threatening injury, he received a gift from a legend, he went toe-to-toe with a giant, and he stormed the field with his friends to celebrate Detmer’s Heisman winning performance against Miami.

Today, Anderson is the executive vice president and COO for Mountain America Credit Union. When he and his family settle into their seats at LES, he can see the company’s name at the top of the southeast corner of the stadium. It’s a business marketing move to have it there, but it’s personal to him.

“For us, BYU is extremely important for a lot of reasons. First of all, part of our mission is financial literacy,” he said. “We want to share that message with as many people as possible.

“Obviously, with the large alumni base and all the good things BYU does we feel it is an important partner of ours to help spread that message. The other thing is, we also partner with BYU for things like the Red Cross and other great community charitable events and things to try and raise funds.

“Anytime we have sponsorship, we want to have a charitable tie so that we can, together, help to lift others.”

Lift others, just like Doug Toole, Dr. Eric Anderson and Floyd Johnson lifted him during a 12-month period that changed his life and cemented his BYU fandom that not even the long arms of Shawn Bradley could swat away.

Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com