Archive for the ‘BYU’ Category
Catching Up With Lavell Edwards
Friday, August 7th, 2009Jay Bybee: The Man Behind Waterboarding
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
Jay Bybee has been called the “forgotten man” in the mounting furor over the CIA’s harsh interrogation of imprisoned terror suspects — but he’s quickly assuming a leading role. Though the mild-mannered lawyer has attracted little public attention, as a top Justice Department official he approved an array of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against alleged al-Qaeda members that many observers call torture. They include forcing prisoners to stay awake for a week or more, waterboarding them and trapping them with an insect to exploit their fear of bugs.
Now a federal judge, Bybee, 55, led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from November 2001 to March 2003 and signed off on a 2002 memo, recently released by the Obama Administration, authorizing the rough stuff in clinical detail. Along with his deputy John Yoo, Bybee infamously claimed that interrogation practices aren’t legally torture unless they inflict pain resembling that of “serious physical injury” such as organ failure or death. While supporters say the policies helped keep the country safe in the wake of Sept. 11, critics say the memos are illegal and helped pave the way for the abuses seen at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. (See pictures of the aftershocks of Abu Ghraib.
Though Bybee wasn’t the only person responsible for crafting the Bush administration’s interrogation policy, unlike his erstwhile colleagues he continues to hold public office, sitting on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He now faces calls for impeachment from Sen. Patrick Leahy, former Obama aide John Podesta and the New York Times editorial board, among other corners. The Justice Department has distanced itself from much of Bybee’s work and is reportedly preparing a scathing internal report that could call for him and others to be reprimanded or even disbarred.
Associates say Bybee was working under intense pressure and isn’t proud of his controversial work. As a friend told the Washington Post, “I’ve heard him express regret that the memo was misused.”
Fast Facts:
• Born in 1955 in Oakland. Met his wife, a high school teacher, at a screening of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” at the National Archives. They have four children.
• Served as a Mormon missionary in Chile from 1973-1975.
• Graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 1977, earning his law degree there three years later.
• Worked as an associate at the prestigious firm of Sidley & Austin in Washington before joining the Justice Department in 1984. Later served as Associate Counsel to President George H.W. Bush.
• Spent 10 years as a law professor at Louisiana State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was named Professor of the Year in 2000.
• Returned to the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel in 2001.
• Confirmed by the Senate to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2003 by a vote of 74-19. Some Democrats now say they would have blocked his confirmation if they had known about the interrogation memos.
• A former Eagle Scout.
• A kazoo enthusiast, he reportedly performed Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” with other kazoo players at Louisiana State University.
Glenn Beck’s backing bumps Skousen book to top
Saturday, March 21st, 2009From The Deseret News:
W. Cleon Skousen’s book “The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World, Principles of Freedom 101″ is No. 1 on Amazon.com’s list of Best-sellers in Books. The book was originally published in 1981. (Laura Seitz, Deseret News)
Move over, Oprah. Apparently, a book recommendation from Fox News Channel talk show host Glenn Beck carries a lot of punch, too.
Beck, who will speak at the Stadium of Fire during America’s Freedom Festival at Provo on July 4, has told viewers and listeners of his TV and radio shows to buy a book published nearly 30 years ago by late Utah and Mormon author W. Cleon Skousen.
On Friday, after several days in the top 10, “The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World, Principles of Freedom 101″ leaped to No. 1 on Amazon.com’s list of Bestsellers in Books.
“Everyone should read this book,” the conservative talk show host said as he passed out copies during a recent broadcast. On his radio program Friday evening, Beck touted the book’s climb to No. 1.
Skousen published “The 5000 Year Leap” in 1981, nearly 25 years after he published “The Naked Communist,” a national bestseller that has sold more than 1 million copies.
“The 5000 Year Leap” is now in its seventh edition. In it, Skousen lists 28 fundamental beliefs he declared were held by America’s Founding Fathers. He suggested those core beliefs made possible more world progress in the first 200 years of the American experiment than was made in the previous 5,000.
Beck added an introduction to the copies he handed out on his show. “(Skousen) was years ahead of his time,” Beck wrote. “And our founders were thousands of years ahead of their time. My hope is that all Americans young and old will spend time with this book to understand why we are who we are. The words of our Founding Fathers have a way of reaching across any political divide.”
Beck, as Skousen was, is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“They are words of wisdom that I can only describe as divinely inspired,” Beck continued in his introduction. “They are here for us to help solve the unsolvable — and they are the reason why we have for so long been the greatest nation on earth. But most importantly, in these pages, you will find hope.”
Beck, who regularly criticizes the Obama administration and decries the nation’s financial future on his shows, is the third most-watched individual on cable television. His 5 p.m. program averaged nearly 2.2 million viewers last month.
He has been featured during the Stadium of Fire in Provo for the past two years.
Skousen died in 2006 at the age of 92. A sometimes controversial figure inside and outside the church, where he was close to late church President David O. McKay, he caused a huge flap in 1960 when as Salt Lake City’s police chief he raided a private club where new Mayor J. Bracken Lee was playing cards. Lee fired Skousen.
Skousen spent 15 years as a professor at Brigham Young University in two stints. An FBI agent who worked with J. Edgar Hoover, he ran for governor of Utah and organized the Freemen Institute, later known as the National Center for Constitutional Studies, which published “The 5000 Year Leap.”
Skousen never joined the ultra-conservative John Birch Society but was a supporter. NewMajority.com writer David Frum has called Skousen a Mormon Bircher and characterizes him as one of the “legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fantasist of theories about secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government.”
Dozens of Amazon.com book reviewers have praised “The 5000 Year Leap.” One, S. Peek, wrote that “The premise of the book is that because of the free market system that took root after our Constitution was enacted, the United States literally made a 5,000-year leap of progress in the time since then.”
The book outlines sources of thought used by the Founders as they developed the Constitution, including Cicero, Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith. (cont.)
Hard to gag BYU’s Tavernari and his game
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009From Rivals.com (Yahoo! Sports):
(Photo courtsey of The Conglomerate)
His days in the United States have been a precarious balance for BYU forward Jonathan Tavernari, a weighing of what he wants for himself as an athlete and as a human being, a search for self-awareness that always seems to have people questioning his motivations.
Why did he come to this country in the first place? How did he end up at BYU, where he has become the Cougars’ most talkative player and their most prolific 3-point shooter? What will he do after this, his junior season?
The questions never stop.
“There’s more to life than basketball,” he said Wednesday, one day before eighth-seeded BYU’s West Region first-round game against ninth-seeded Texas A&M at the Wachovia Center. “My progress as a person has been as great, if not better, than my progress as a basketball player.”
Tavernari emigrated from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to the United State in 2004, a Catholic kid so set on honing his basketball skills and getting an education at an American university that he was willing to change religions to do it.
His mother, Thelma, a renowned basketball player and coach in Brazil, asked one of her former players, Walter Roese, if Jonathan could stay with Roese’s family and attend high school in Provo, Utah. Roese, who was pursuing his MBA at BYU and was the director of operations for BYU’s men’s program at the time, agreed to take Jonathan in. Himself a Mormon, Roese baptized Tavernari into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“The religions are not too different,” Tavernari said. “My parents always gave me a good religious base since I was a young kid. They were actually really happy for me. It wasn’t really much of a transition.”
After one year at Provo’s Timpview High, Tavernari moved in with a friend’s family in Las Vegas and transferred to Bishop Gorman, the high school with perhaps the highest basketball profile in Nevada. But Tavernari’s arrival ignited a blaze of controversy. Schools threatened to leave the Nevada Interscholastic Athletic Association if Tavernari was permitted to play because he wasn’t living with a legal guardian. After he was declared eligible, he averaged more than 25 points and 10 rebounds per game, the TV cameras, protests and police escorts at Gorman’s games barely bothering him.
“That was hard,” he deadpanned Wednesday, “because I’m kind of shy.”
Tavernari, who has made 82 3-pointers and is BYU’s third-leading scorer at 15.9 points per game, is so uninhibited that Cougars coach Dave Rose had to put a gag order on him in January after Tavernari reportedly suggested that BYU opponent Wake Forest didn’t play “a whole lot of defense.”
Yet for an institution stereotyped as conservative and homogenous, BYU has learned to live with different sorts of words from the mouths of its basketball players. Foreign-born players at the Division I level now number more than 400, the total tripling from 1993-2006, and BYU has been a trailblazing program. Twenty-eight international players have gone through BYU, and the school touts itself as being the first Division I team to have a foreign-born player on its roster – Finland’s Timo Lampen in the 1960-61 season. And when Roese joined Rose’s coaching staff in 2005 and spent two seasons on BYU’s bench, he became the first full-time native Brazilian assistant in Division I history.
“The U.S. still has the best players, no question about it,” Roese, now an assistant at Nebraska, said by phone this week. “But there are other countries picking up the love of the game, especially because of TV and the Internet. Now, they’re showing all the NCAA games. On Brazilian channels, you see NCAA games now.
“That creates a lot of expectations for these kids because they want to play the best basketball possible.”
That was what drew Tavernari to the United States initially, but here he is now: an international relations major who loves college life (even the more restrictive life on BYU’s campus), is engaged and on Thursday can help the Cougars win their first NCAA tournament game since 1993.
Tavernari was the only non-professional to earn a roster spot on the Brazilian national team last year, and his return to BYU for his senior season is questionable. He will have opportunities to play professionally, here or elsewhere.
“Since they have their own professional teams [in Europe and South America], it’s tough to get a kid who could get money and bring him to the U.S.,” Tavernari said. “I’m half-Italian and have my Italian passport, so the temptations and offers to play overseas come all the time. You get $600,000, $700,000 offers.
“I’m debating with my parents whether I should have done it or not, but at the end of the day, when I put my head on the pillow, there’s so much more than basketball: my education, my legacy.”
Those questions are for another time, though. Texas A&M beat BYU 67-62 in the first round in last season’s tournament, so this matchup is unique for this field of 65.
“It’s kind of a controversial thing that we’re matched up with them again,” Tavernari said. “But I think from all the 65 teams here, we’re probably the luckiest ones because we know who we’re going to face. We actually have a chance to know who we’re playing against.”
Then he headed off for practice. For once, come Thursday, basketball will be all there is for him.
BYUH suffers budget cuts
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
This year BYU-Hawaii is cutting near $2.1 million out of the annual budget due to the affects of the poor economy on the LDS Church’s tithing fund, said Steve Tueller, budget director at BYUH.
Each year, BYUH, BYU-Idaho and BYU in Provo submit a proposed expenditure budget to the commissioner of Church Education. In the end, the First Presidency, since they are on the Board of Trustees and the Council of the Disposition of Tithes, reviews the budgets and determines if the budgets are supportable with the expected tithing income of that year. Because the economy is faltering this year and annual household incomes are expected to decrease, the estimated amount of tithing is forecasted to be lower. This requires all the LDS Church schools to cut money from their budgets.
Although the church does have income from other sources, the BYU schools are paid primarily through tithing funds, Tueller said. The church has the option of taking money from other places, but since they advise members not to spend more then they make, they are deciding to follow this principle by not spending more money than what is coming into the church’s tithing funds.
“When times are tough, we can’t expect it not to affect us. I have all the confidence in the world that the leaders of the church will be guided on where to use tithing and other church funds,” said Jacob Hansen, sophomore in business from Reno, Nevada.
The First Presidency sent a letter asking each of the schools to reduce their budgets to the 2008 budget levels. This means spending the same amount of money that was spent last year, even though more money was requested for 2009.
President Steven C. Wheelwright initially submitted a lower than 2008 level expenditure budget to the commissioner of Church Education for 2009. BYUH was able to do this because it eliminated pockets of the budget that were not being spent from the previous year. Because the other BYU schools are making a sacrifice, President Wheelwright felt that BYUH should do the same, said Tueller. It was decided that 3 percent would be taken out of all budget categories resulting in the $2.1 million reduction.
Four main measures are being taken to save money, he said. First, hiring is on freeze. The BYU schools are not hiring any new employees except for student employees. Second, travel costs are being reduced by 20 percent. This is harder for BYUH than the other BYU schools since travel is only possible by plane. This means about 175 less trips will be taken this year. Third, the amount of money spent on supplies and equipment is being slashed. Lastly, the amount of money spent on projects will be less. The church will only allow projects that are required for safety, code and regulation, and the preservation of facilities.
Students can also help with the amount of money spent in the school’s budget. “Try and take care of facilities so there is no unnecessary wear and tear of things that cost money to fix,” said Tueller. He also urged students with jobs to do their best work and work an honest day’s labor.
Kylie Hislop, sophomore in history from Morgan, Utah, said, “To keep our resources available, students need to take advantage of what is given. Let’s not waste what we’re paying for.”
Steve Young Headlines the 2009 NCAA Silver Anniversary Class
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009From BYUCougars.com:
Steve Young receives the prestigious 2009 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award from BYU Director of Athletics Tom Holmoe at the 2009 NCAA Convention. NCAA Photo
Former BYU football All-American Steve Young headlined a group of six former NCAA student-athletes who received the prestigious 2009 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award at the NCAA Convention in January.
The honor recognizes former student-athletes who successfully completed collegiate careers in various sports and have excelled in their chosen professions. The Silver Anniversary Award acknowledges the former student-athletes on their 25th anniversary of completing their athletics eligibility.
The Silver Anniversary Award recipients are selected by the NCAA Honors Committee and were honored on January 15 at the NCAA Honors and Delegates Celebration in Washington, D.C.
Young set 13 NCAA records (four total offense and nine passing) and seven Western Athletic Conference marks during a prolific career as quarterback at BYU.
Other 2009 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award winners included:
> Darrell Green, Texas A&M (football & track)
> Deidre Collins-Parker, Hawaii (volleyball & basketball)
> Mark Fusco, Harvard (ice hockey)
> Earl Graves Jr., Yale (basketball)
> Kathy McMinn, Georgia (gymnastics)
Young, who is currently a NFL studio analyst for ESPN, was the 1983 Davey O’Brien Award winner and the 1982 WAC Offensive Player of the Year. As a senior he posted a completion rate of 71.3 percent (306 of 429 for 3,902 yards and 33 touchdowns) — the highest single-season percentage in NCAA history at the time.
The highest-rated quarterback in NFL history, Young was named MVP in the San Francisco 49ers’ Super Bowl XXIX victory in 1995. The two-time league MVP was selected as the 1992 NFL Player of the Year by Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News. During his career, appeared in seven consecutive Pro Bowls and won four straight NFL passing titles. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.
A 1984 NCAA postgraduate scholarship winner and NCAA Top Five honoree, Young graduated with a degree in international relations from Brigham Young and earned a law degree from the Brigham Young’s J. Rueben Clark Law School in 1994.
An active participant in numerous charities across the nation, Young serves as honorary chair of the Children’s Miracle Network in San Francisco and is a member of the Dream Team of Children’s Miracle Network and Parents of Children with Disabilities. He also is the founder of the Forever Young Charity Foundation.
Young is the fourth BYU Cougar to receive the prestigious NCAA Silver Anniversary Award, joining Larry EchoHawk (1995), Gifford Nielsen (2003) and Danny Ainge (2006).
When choosing where to play, Mormon recruits face unique issues
Saturday, January 31st, 2009From Sports Illustrated:
Five-star linebacker Manti Te’o has only considered programs that will permit him to go on a two-year Mormon mission after his freshman season. (Chris Livingston/Icon SMI)
Manti Te’o refrained from mincing words each time he met a college coach. Te’o, one of the nation’s highest ranked linebacker prospects, told every coach who recruited him that, after his freshman season, he might leave the country for two years.
“I basically told them, ‘This is me,’” said Te’o, from Laie, Hawaii. “I’m LDS. I’m thinking of serving a mission, and I want that to be available to me. If that’s not in the cards for your university, I have to respect that, but I have to consider others.”
Te’o is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — more commonly referred to as the Mormon church. When male members of the church turn 19, they are encouraged to embark on a two-year mission to proselytize in parts of the world that may not have been exposed to the 189-year-old faith. Te’o would like to serve that mission, even if it means leaving college for two years. A pronouncement like Te’o’s might end most players’ recruitments, but Rivals.com ranks Te’o as the nation’s No. 12 overall prospect. Because Te’o has so much potential, almost every coach who recruited him consented to the mission.
The mission question is just one of a set of issues LDS players face when they look outside the small group of schools that are accustomed to signing Mormons. LDS players also must consider how their faith will mesh with the campus environment at either a secular school or one run by a different faith, and they must prepare for a backlash from some in the LDS community should they choose a school other than Brigham Young, the Provo, Utah, university run by the Mormon church. Te’o and Provo offensive lineman Xavier Su’a Filo (No. 63 by Rivals) each have faced these issues during the past few months, and each will weigh them carefully in the next few days as they decide which school they’ll sign with on Wednesday.
Te’o will sign either with a state university (UCLA), a secular private university (USC) or the nation’s most prominent Catholic university (Notre Dame). While starring at Punahou — President Barack Obama’s alma mater and SI’s No. 1 high school athletic program in 2008 — Te’o piqued dozens of schools’ interests. He had 29 scholarship offers before he stopped counting them. His sideline-to-sideline speed and penchant for gut-rattling hits brought recruiters in droves, and, somewhat to Te’o’s surprise, his request that he be allowed to go on a mission didn’t drive them all away.
Te’o worried especially about USC, which had a reputation for discouraging players from going on missions. He had good reason. DeAnn Longshore, whose son, Nate, just finished his career as a quarterback at Cal, said that when her son was being recruited for the class of 2004, USC coaches told Nate, an LDS member, that they would offer a scholarship only if he promised he wouldn’t leave for a mission. So, in a phone conversation about a year ago, Te’o asked Trojans coach Pete Carroll pointblank if his scholarship would be waiting for him when he returned from his mission. Te’o’s father, Brian, said Carroll explained how his opinion of mission trips has changed in recent years. Brian Te’o said Carroll answered all questions when he said, “Once a Trojan, always a Trojan.”
Su’a Filo, who narrowed his finalists last week to BYU, LSU, UCLA, USC and Utah, also met with less resistance than he anticipated when he brought up the mission. “The coaches have been really good at understanding,” he said. Two of Su’a Filo’s finalists, BYU and Utah, are accustomed to signing future missionaries. BYU encourages the mission trip for all its students, so the coaching staff is adept at juggling scholarships and the depth chart as players depart and return. Ditto for Utah, a state school only a few miles from LDS headquarters in Salt Lake City. Utes coach Kyle Whittingham is an LDS member and BYU alumnus so familiar with the Book of Mormon that he has a standby passage to fire up Utes fans (”And the Lord shall be red in his apparel”). “See,” Whittingham told Yahoo! Sports last month. “It was right there in the Doctrine and Covenants the whole time.” (cont.)
It's official: BYU to open 2009 season against No. 1 Oklahoma
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009From The Provo Daily News:
There will be no questions about the BYU football team’s strength of schedule in 2009.
The Cougars announced their non-conference slate on Tuesday and, as rumored for months, BYU opens the season on Saturday, Sept. 5, against the Oklahoma Sooners in the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. The game will be televised on ABC or ESPN as part of ESPN’s second annual Kickoff Week.Oklahoma is currently ranked No. 1 in the country and plays No. 2 Florida for the BCS championship on Thursday.
“We appreciate the unique opportunity of being part of the first college game played in the new home of the Dallas Cowboys,” BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall said. “Given the strong football traditions of Oklahoma, BYU and the Dallas Cowboys, it’s a fitting matchup and a perfect venue for what should be a great football game.”
The Oklahoma game will be followed by another road trip south to play at Tulane on Saturday, Sept. 12, before returning home against Florida State on Saturday, Sept. 19. The Cougars also host Utah State on General Conference weekend (Friday, Oct. 2).
It’s easily one of BYU’s most ambitious schedules ever.
“We are excited about our non-conference schedule for next season,” Holmoe said. “There were several teams involved in making things work out and we appreciate all those who worked hard to make it happen. The home schedule should be one of the best in school history. In addition to perennial football power Florida State, fans will enjoy home games with in-state rivals Utah and Utah State as well as TCU, Colorado State and Air Force in conference.”
In order to add Oklahoma, BYU had to reschedule a home-and-home series with Arizona State that was due to begin in 2009 in Tempe. So far, no word from BYU if that series will pick up again, but the Arizona Republic is reporting the 2011 game between Arizona State and BYU in Provo has also been canceled.
BYU won its only previous meeting against Oklahoma, 31-6 in the 1994 Copper Bowl.
In a press release, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said, “I don’t think there is a better place than Texas to celebrate the kickoff of the 2009 college football season, and I don’t think you will find a better stadium for watching that football action than our new home in Arlington.”
The Cougars have split a pair of games with Tulane, losing 41-27 in the 1998 Liberty Bowl and scoring a 70-35 victory over the Green Wave in the Black Coaches Association Classic to open the 2001 season.
Florida State won the two previous meetings with BYU (1991 and 2000). The Cougars and Utah State will meet for the 79th time in 2009. After its 34-14 win in 2008, BYU owns a 42-33-3 advantage in the longtime series.
Home cookin': Ex-Oak Ridge star shines for BYU
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008From The Sacramento Bee:
Name: Austin Collie
Local ties: Oak Ridge High School
The skinny: Collie sizzled in warm weather and cold, the regular season, the biggest games and right on into the bowl season. The junior receiver for BYU set school records with 106 receptions for 1,538 yards and 15 touchdowns in earning second-team All-America honors. His receptions and yards led the country this season . He had 11 consecutive 100-yard games, including pulling in 11 passes for 119 yards in a 31-21 loss to Arizona in the Las Vegas Bowl on Saturday.
Hard to please: Collie was not pleased with the bowl outcome, telling reporters afterward, “Some guys played to the best, some guys didn’t, and I was one who didn’t.”
Prep flashback: Collie was a Prep All-American at Oak Ridge in 2003 and was named The Bee’s Player of the Year. He had 24 total touchdowns as a senior in garnering Northern California Player of the Year accolades. He then embarked on a church mission in Buenos Aires.
What now?: Collie would surely generate some draft interest with his combination of speed, hands and technique. Collie said after the bowl loss, “I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m thinking about the loss. We had a good season, not a great season. We had the potential to have a great season.”
Vikings can pronounce (Former BYU Player) Tahi experiment a success
Sunday, December 21st, 2008From The Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Naufahu Tahi was asked for the greatest mangling of his name that he has encountered in his years as a high school, college and pro football player.
The young man of Tongan ancestry smiled and said: “It would be hard to pick out one … it’s happened so often.”
Guess what, Naufahu. We have a fresh contender for all-time mangle.
On Sunday, Adrian Peterson was answering questions about his big day against the Arizona Cardinals. The Vikings running back and now leading contender as the NFL’s MVP said the work done by his offensive line was so impressive that “Fahu” could’ve made big yards.
That’s the shortened version of Naufahu used by everyone at Winter Park in referring to the starting fullback. A worker on assignment from the Cardinals’ public relations staff was in the Vikings locker room taping interviews.
The tapes were turned into transcripts that were distributed in the press box. Somehow, “Fahu” became “Fievel” in Peterson’s quote.
“Fievel?” Tahi said.
Yes, Fievel — a cartoon mouse from the 1986 animated film “An American Tail.”
Tahi shook his head and said: “That’s it. That’s the worst my name has been mangled.”
This conversation came a few days after Tahi did considerable mangling of the Cardinals’ defense as a lead blocker for Peterson and Chester Taylor.
“Basically, he’s a lead blocker or somebody that’s taking care of a linebacker,” coach Brad Childress said. “He’s done a good job with the physical aspect and with the protection in the passing game.”
Childress said the Vikings used a fullback on roughly 33 percent of their plays in 2007. Most of those went to Tony Richardson, the now-departed veteran.
“I don’t remember how many snaps [Tahi] had last year — 13, maybe 15,” the coach said. “Obviously, there was a ramping-up process for him in training camp. He was able to pick it up. He’s done a good job.”
The Vikings signed Thomas Tapeh to serve as Richardson’s replacement. He got the money, but Tahi wound up with the fullback job.
Asked to evaluate the Tahi-Tapeh competition, Childress said: “Fahu’s here, and Tapeh’s not.”
Tahi’s parents come from Tonga. Naufahu was born in California, raised in Utah and never has visited the home island in the South Pacific.
“I plan to get to Tonga some time,” Tahi said. “It’s not going to be while I’m playing football, so hopefully that trip won’t be for a few years.”
Tahi’s family was drawn to Utah by the Mormon faith. He went to Brigham Young, played as a freshman, then went on a Mormon mission that kept him out of football from 2000 through 2002.
And at what exotic location did he serve his mission?
“Jacksonville, Florida,” he said. “I was hoping for something a little more dramatic — Africa, South America — but there was also work to be done in Jacksonville.”
Tahi shared running back duties in BYU’s one-back, pass-heavy offense. His quarterback was John Beck, now the QB-in-waiting for the Miami Dolphins.
Keith Clearwater: Former rookie sensation overcomes personal trials
Thursday, December 11th, 2008From PGATour.com:
Keith Clearwater didn’t simply appear on the PGA TOUR in 1987, though it might’ve seemed that way at the time. He’d fought for four long years, through mini tours, state opens and four failed attempts at q-school. In 1986, Clearwater had a four-win season on the Tournament Players Association mini-tour and he finally earned his PGA TOUR card in q-school later that season.
Once he finally made it to the top, though, Clearwater didn’t waste any time becoming a force to be reckoned with on the TOUR.
At the 1987 Colonial National Invitation, Clearwater performed a feat that few will likely ever match. Forced to play 36 holes on the final day, he rattled off two straight 64s on Sunday to win the prestigious event with a 14-under total. He beat Davis Love III by three strokes for his first TOUR win.
“My game underwent a refining process in those years of playing on the mini-tour,” Clearwater said in 1987, following his win at Colonial. “And winning a TPA event really helped me win at Colonial, because the emotions are exactly the same coming up 18.
“One has to learn how to deal with that without being out of control. Those were four good years, and I didn’t waste them. I learned a lot and when I got on the TOUR, I felt like I belonged. If I had gone to the TOUR immediately, I likely would not have been as successful.”
Later that year, the rookie with experience won again. In his last official tournament of the season, Clearwater posted a 10-under 278 at the Centel Classic to beat Bill Glasson, Billy Kratzert, Bob Lohr and Joey Sindelar by a stroke. The win brought his season earnings to $320,007.
Not only did he capture attention for those two victories, but he also shot a 64 in the third round of the U.S. Open that year and gained even more respect. Because of his movie-star good looks and that stellar rookie season that also included Rookie of the Year honors, the golf world wondered if he was the next big thing.
Clearwater continued to have occasional brilliant moments. In 1992, Clearwater finished 22nd on the money list after nearly winning the Doral-Ryder Open and The Honda Classic. He had 10 top-10 finishes that season in 32 starts and pocketed $609,273.
So what happened? Why hasn’t Clearwater made a cut since September 2004 on the Nationwide Tour and November 2001 on the PGA TOUR? To put it simply — life got in the way.
First, it was his kids. The devout Mormon’s second child was born in June 1988 and, at that point, he started heading home to Orem, Utah, every week from Sunday until Wednesday.
“After I won, I decided I would be a family man,” Clearwater said in 1989. He and his wife now have four kids and, to this day, he still devotes most of his off-course time to them.
Then, in the early 2000s, it was his parents who needed him. Both were alcoholics. As Clearwater put it, he’d bought them a house and a car and made their lives easy. They could sit around and drink all day. Some days they couldn’t even get out of bed.
In 2001, he decided to take time away from the game and care for them. By January 2003, his mother had passed away. His father entered Alcoholics Anonymous and had been in recovery for 20 months before passing away in 2006 from prostate cancer.
Clearwater’s wife Sue also contracted bacterial pneumonia in 2001 and he withdrew from a U.S. Open qualifying round immediately when he heard she had a 50-50 chance of surviving.
His wife is fine now, and Clearwater believes his parents are in a better place. Though he hasn’t played often in the past seven years, Clearwater still has fight left in him.
While playing at Colonial in 2006 on a sponsor’s exemption, Clearwater told PGATOUR.COM that his best golf was still in front of him.
“That means nothing to anyone but me,” he said. “Everyone’s ‘Oh, yeah, right.’ But I know that.”
He hasn’t quite lived up to that statement yet, as Clearwater only made nine starts on the Nationwide Tour in 2008 and two on the PGA TOUR but didn’t make a cut. Still, he can start attempting to qualify on the Champions Tour once he turns 50 in September and, like in 1987, might be a rookie sensation.
BYU, Arizona to meet in Las Vegas Bowl
Sunday, December 7th, 2008From The Las Vegas Sun:
For the fourth consecutive year, BYU (10-2 overall, 6-2 MWC) will represent the Mountain West Conference in the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium. It was announced Sunday afternoon that the Cougars will face Arizona (7-5, 5-4) from the Pac-10.
The Wildcats clinched a winning regular season record Saturday night with a 31-10 victory over in-state rival Arizona State.
The matchup will pit two offenses against each other which rank in the top 20 in the FBS ranks. Arizona ranks 16th with 37.1 ppg, while BYU is 19th at 35.3.
This will mark the 22nd meeting between the two programs, but the first time in a bowl game. The last two meetings included a 16-13 Arizona victory in Tucson to open the 2006 season, then a 20-7 BYU triumph in Provo a year later.
The Las Vegas Bowl committee announced last week that the game is already sold out, but several Arizona fans now have added incentive to come to Sin City for the weekend. The Las Vegas Bowl will kick off at 5 p.m. while the Wildcats’ men’s basketball squad takes on UNLV earlier that afternoon in the Thomas & Mack Center.
Report: Univ. of Washington tabs Sarkisian as new head coach
Thursday, December 4th, 2008From The Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Seattle, WA (Sports Network) - Southern California offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian will reportedly become the next head coach of the Washington Huskies.
According to The Seattle Times, Sarkisian will take over for an 0-11 Washington team that recently dismissed Tyrone Willingham as its head coach. He has never served as a head coach at any level.
The 34-year-old Sarkisian has served as an assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach for USC since 2005 and also from 2001-2003. He was also the quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders in 2004.
Sarkisian quarterbacked a 13-1 BYU squad in 1996 that won the WAC title and holds the record for completion percentage in a single game (91.2 percent, 31- of-34). After college, he played three seasons in the Canadian Football League for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach, Fresno State head coach Pat Hill and Cincinnati head coach Brian Kelly also interviewed for the Huskies’ head coaching position. Leach and Hill had withdrawn their names from consideration, according to the report.
Washington finishes out its season with a road contest at California this Saturday. Willingham will serve as the head coach for the game.
Hawaiian Book of Mormon unveilled in Laie
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008From Ke Alakai:
One of the 30 surviving 1855 copies of the Hawaiian Book of Mormon was presented on display Friday at the La’ie Hawai’i Temple Visitors Center after an unveiling ceremony. “Ka Buke a Moramona” or the Hawaiian Book of Mormon was a result of a two and half year work of Elder George Q. Cannon’ s inspiration with the help from Judge Ionatana Napela, a descendant of the great chief of Maui. Three thousand copies of the Hawaiian Book of Mormon were printed in 1855 and later were burned in fire, except for 200 copies. Most of them were destroyed, but 30 survived.
Mark James, from the English Language Teaching and Learning Department said, “My main interest in seeing this rare edition is because I am serious student of LDS Hawaiian history. It’s so amazing to me that BYU Hawaii has three copies of one of the rarest books in church history. A copy of the 1855 Hawaiian Book of Mormon is more valuable than an original 1830 Book of Mormon.”
Elder George Q. Cannon wrote in his journal that he felt like a stranger among the native Hawaiians while he was on his mission and was homesick. He found comfort through the Book of Mormon. At that point of his life, he said that he found more value in the Book of Mormon than he ever has before.
“But there was no Book of Mormon in Hawaiian that he could share with the Hawaiian people that he loved so much, and so he said, ‘Well, we’ve got to get this translated,’” said Elder Jacobs of the Hawaii Temple Visitors Center.
In January 1851, the translation work began with few pages and finished in July 1853. In January 1855, 3000 copies of the Hawaiian Book of Mormon were printed.
Only about a dozen of the 200 remaining books survived this one because in 1920, it was given to N. Ford Clark, as a gift after in three and half year mission in Hawaii.
James said, “What I really enjoyed the most about the unveiling ceremony, was listening to brother Ellis read from his grandfather’s Journal about the experiences he had as a missionary from 1917-1921. Because he loved the Hawaiian language so much, a Hawaiian family decided to give him such a valuable possession–an 1855 edition of the Book of Mormon. And of course it’s such a beautiful thing that his descendents would want to give it to the BYU Hawaii archives, to preserve it and show it.”
Dean Clark Ellis, grandson of N. Ford Clark said.”He was a collector of books, and I’m sure this was his most prized possession.”
Two Hawaiian ladies, who are the descendants one of the people that Elder Clark taught, were introduced as special guests in the meeting.
Rhonda Martinez, from Colorado explained that she and her husband had never seen the Hawaiian Book of Mormon before. Both found out about the conference through the newspaper. She shared that her favorite part of the conference was when the descendants of the people that elder Clark taught were introduced.
Martinez said, “My favorite part was when he’s introduced the ladies who are part of the history.”
In order to gather pieces of history of this Book of Mormon, it took a year and $15,000 to restore it page by page. Moreover, Ellis was able to trace back the history of his grandfather’s mission companion who liked to take pictures and negotiate to have his grandfather’s mission pictures donated to BYU-Hawaii as part of the history.
Spencer Haynie, senior in psychology from California, said, “I liked the presentation by Dean because I liked the story about how they got pictures from his grandfather’s companion and donated them to BYUH.
James said, “The stories that Dean Ellis read from his grandfather’s journal remind me also of how important it is for each of us to keep a journal.” He continued, “And most importantly, I thought about how little of our church history is available for people to read and see and learn about. We have thousands of people coming to Laie every year, but if visitors want to learn about the history of the Church and the people of this community, there is nothing for them to see and no place to go. I think we really need a small church history museum somewhere in our community. This would be a great benefit not only to visitors but to each rising generation here in our community.”
Ellis said. “This is where it belongs. This is where my grandfather wanted it to be, where my parents wanted it to be, and I’m glad now instead of it being in a vault that is on display.”
You can see “Ka Buke A Moramona” at the Visitors Center near the temple. It’s open every day.
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