Brigham Young is the winner of “The People’s National Championship.” The Cougars used a fourth-quarter comeback to beat Georgia Tech 25-21 in the 2025 Pop-Tarts Bowl and win the glorious honor of eating the life-sized mascots of the beloved bowl game.

After all, BYU won 11 games in 2024 but didn’t qualify for the Big 12 championship game or come all that close to the playoff. In the selection committee’s final rankings, the Cougars were seven spots from the final at-large bid, which went to a team, SMU, they defeated on the road early in the season.

When Puka Nacua transferred to BYU from Washington for his final year two years of college in 2021, he broke out as a top receiver in the country. Nacua earned multiple accolades across his final two seasons, before becoming Second Team NFL All-Pro as a rookie in 2023 for the Los Angeles Rams.