(Photo: Easton Stockford/WCSN)
PROVO, Utah — BYU football climbed to No. 7 in the Week 9 AP Top-25 Poll after its 27-20 victory over ASU on Saturday. The Cougars extended their home win streak to nine games. But football might not be the main attraction at LaVell Edwards Stadium; those lie on the concourse.
The CougarTail, BYU’s signature concession item, is a 15-inch-long maple-flavor donut exclusively sold at BYU athletic events. Over the years, it has become a hallmark of BYU football games, even being named ESPN’s Concession Food of the Year three times.
The iconic sweet treat was created in 2003 by then-Managing Director of Dining Services Dean Wright, who was inspired by the tail of a taxidermied cougar in the Wilkinson Student Center.
“We’ve been doing CougarTails for 20 years, and it’s been progressively growing,” Job Rodriguez, BYU Director of Support Services, said. “The first several years, it was not growing that much, but I think people started identifying it as a staple product for athletic events. Then, when social media came in… things started picking up in popularity.”
When Rodriguez came into his position in 2015, the highest number of CougarTails the school would sell at football games was around 4,000 to 6,000, to his estimate. On Saturday, 13,400 were made.
Typically, the process to make and distribute CougarTails begins 12 hours before kickoff.
The operation begins with two to three trucks dropping off raw ingredients at the Culinary Support Center, around a five-minute drive from LaVell Edwards. The staff of upwards of 30 people bake each CougarTail and dip each donut by hand.
Once every CougarTail is finished being made, they are put into sleeves, transported to the stadium, and placed in warming ovens at each of the dozens of concession locations around the concourse to stay fresh.
In total, the operation takes hundreds of people, from the truck drivers to the bakers to the vendors. And each and every one of them has their opinion on which CougarTail flavor is the best.
The traditional — and most’s favorite — icing flavor is maple, but the culinary staff has branched out for select games. On Saturday, both maple- and chocolate-flavored CougarTails were offered.
In 2023, BYU rolled out a bacon-flavored CougarTail when BYU played Texas Tech, an ode to the state of Texas’ love affair with bacon. Rodriguez said his workers disliked the production of the “BaconTail” because it required them to hand-dip thousands of donuts in bacon.
A LaVell Edwards Stadium concession stand worker who talked to Cronkite Sports said his favorite was the “Brat-Tail,” a CougarTail with a 1/3-pound bratwurst sausage in the middle.
“It’s just been something that we try to get creative with, and people respond really well to that,” Rodriguez said.
Besides BYU’s signature treat, the stadium also offers dozens of different local vendor stands. From poke bowls to soft pretzels to the famous BYU Creamery ice cream, football games in Provo have become much more than what’s on the field.
“I think we have one of the best game day experiences in terms of food,” Rodriguez said. “We have so many different places where we treat people.”
