Sportswriting Flashback - Nate Meikle's Return to BYU Lineup

MEIKLE RETURNS TO BYU PRACTICE

Former Hillcrest star back with first-team offense

By MICHAEL MCQUAIN

prsports@postregister.com

PROVO – Saturday morning, the BYU football team gathered at LaVell Edwards Stadium for the next-to-last full contact scrimmage of Fall camp. Excitement and optimism abounded, both on the playing field and in the stands with the 2006 season opener against Arizona just two weeks away.

About two miles away, the atmosphere was decidedly different.

Nate Meikle, along with several other injured Cougars, ran through some light running and offensive drills under the watchful eyes of a BYU strength coach. No coaches, no fans, no fanfare – just quiet determination.

“We hate it over there,” said Meikle of the isolated, limited workout he and several others endured while the team was scrimmaging full tilt in the stadium. “I understand the reason for it and totally accept his (Mendenhall’s) decision,” added the Academic All-America receiver.

The former Hillcrest star came into fall camp as BYU’s starting H-back, one of the brightest spots in Bronco Mendenhall’s ongoing quest to return the Cougars to their former dominance as one of college football’s perennial offensive powerhouses. When we last saw Meikle, he was playing through a recurring hamstring injury against California in the Las Vegas Bowl.

On that December evening, the Idaho Falls native led all BYU receivers with 12 receptions for 93 yards as BYU mounted a furious fourth-quarter comeback which fell just short in the final moments of a 35-28 loss to the Golden Bears.

Meikle has healed - and then re-injured the hamstring - three times since the bowl game, the last setback coming just a month ago. He has been forced to spend most of 2006 concentrating on treatment and rehabilitation rather than attacking defensive backs.

“I’m running at about 80 percent,” said the 5’9” 181-pound senior. “It feels good, but it also felt good a month ago when I re-pulled it and I wasn’t pushing it that hard.”

Monday, Meikle’s patience and persistence finally paid-off. He re-joined the first-team offense in his first full-contact practice in months. In Mendenhall’s ‘effort-plus-production-equals-playing time’ world, in spite of the long absence, the starting job is Meikle’s to lose.

“He will come back as number one with a chance to hold on to it,” said Mendenhall, who is also one of Meikle’s biggest supporters. “Nate is proven, he’s the one who led the comeback against Cal – I have no question of his heart, commitment or spirit.”

Other than Meikle himself, the Cougar happiest to see #9 back in the offensive huddle is quarterback John Beck, who knows a thing or two about battling through injuries.

“I locker right next to Nate, so I know he’s been frustrated,” said Beck. “The great thing about Nate is when he gets on the practice field he works his tail off. He’s such a good football player, he’s an easy guy to throw to because he sees the same holes I’m seeing - he has a feeling and an awareness for the game.”

That drew a smile from Meikle. “Oh I hope so, I hope he does miss me, and hopefully we can get things going again.”

BYU opens the season Saturday, September 2^nd in Tucson.

Sportswriting Flashback - Pioneer League Baseball

By MICHAEL MCQUAIN

prsports@postregister.com

IDAHO FALLS - It was ‘Bull Durham’ meets ‘Groundhog Day.’

Terrible pitching, stranded base runners, an unending stream of batters, and that was just the top of the first-inning.

Idaho Falls fell to Helena, 6-5 Sunday afternoon in a 3 ½ hour marathon that felt more like a double-header. The loss plunges the Chukars to 7-14 in the Pioneer League second half.

Helena wasted no time jumping on starter Daniel Gutierrez. After giving-up two singles and a walk to open the game, Gutierrez saw Brewers clean-up hitter Chris Errecart slap a bases-loaded chopper to third, scoring Chuckie Caufield. Catcher Andy Bouchie then followed his grand slam from Saturday with a two-run single to left, as the Brewers grabbed a 3-0 lead before a single out had been recorded.

But the Chukars hitters rallied behind Gutierrez in the bottom of the first.

After O.D. Gonzalez led-off with an infield single, Jase Turner crushed a Chris Jean pitch over the wall in right, his sixth home run of the summer, to make it a 3-2 ballgame.

“I was trying to wait for a pitch up in the zone after swinging at a lot of balls in the dirt, trying to have patience,” said Turner of his first homer against a team other than Orem.

But in the second, Caufield ripped a shot to the gap in right centerfield which he stretched into a triple. Then, when a Gutierrez pitch got past catcher Matt Morizio, Caufield raced home, making it 4-2 Brewers.

Once again, the Chukars batters came to the rescue.

Left fielder Alvi Morel slapped a 2 RBI single into center, scoring Marc Maddox and Morizio to level the score at 4-4.

“I’ve been hurt for two weeks, but now that I’m back on the field it feels good to get my groove back” said Morel.

In the Idaho Falls 5th, after spotting Helena two more runs, infielder Kurt Mertins drove Morel home with a single to left, but that was as close as the Chukars would get, eventually stranding nine base runners enroute to the 6-5 final score.

Everybody's Talking....Who's Listening?

"Everybody's talking at me,
I don't hear a word they're saying,
Only the echoes of my mind."
                                  - Harry Nilsson

A funny thing happened today when I went to share some BYU football news with 1,086 of my CLOSEST friends. I discovered it had already been shared by someone else. And then shared and shared and shared some more.

As one who always strives to keep it fresh, I thought, 'okay, my news seems to already be old news, so I'll go to Plan B and toss-out a few opinions or theories about BYU's 2012 football schedule (which will be finalized and announced officially tonight at 6:00 p.m. MT)  Once again, someone had already beaten me to the punch. Actually, several dozen someones.

Welcome to Social Media Information Revolution - the Jeopardy answer to the question: What do you get when you cross the Oklahoma Land Rush with a keyboard and the internet?

Here's MY question: If everybody is talking (myself included), who is listening?

Just in my twitter timeline alone - I'm currently road-blocked by twitter's puzzling limit of only being able to follow 2,000 people since I am Joe Nobody - it's not that much of a stretch to say that almost every week a new sports blog or podcast is born, with anywhere from a single lone 'voice' to as many as 10 contributors, editors etc.

I currently fight under the flag of talkingutahsports.com. As of a few minutes ago, we appeared to have eight folks in our starting lineup. Fortunately, for sanity's sake, we have one more topic selection than we have contributors, so there is minimal content overlap. This seems to be the rule on the larger blogs. There are also smaller ones where usually 1-3 people are all covering the same 'beat,' be it BYU, RSL or the Utah Jazz.

On the one hand, I think it is great that we now live in an age where literally everyone who is passionate about something, whether it is sports, scrapbooking, parenting or politics can have a voice and make themselves heard. This has not always been the case.

Back in the Jurassic Era, when I was a schoolboy athlete and sports junkie, each town had only a select handful of people who had a platform to report, comment and opine on the sports news and issues of the day. The rest of us were relegated to cafeteria, locker room or office cooler discussion.

The one really good thing about these days was the nearly total absence of troll types. I can literally NEVER recall anyone making a comment, and someone else walking right up into their face, chest-to-chest and calling them a $%$##&% idiot. I'm sure it happened occasionally, but not in my little corner of the world. Something about real accountability for one's words - and the possibility of having your nose re-located or swallowing a few teeth seemed to keep the dialogue mostly civil. I digress.

So in your mind, contrast the days I am describing - a handful of TV and radio sportscasters and print sportswriters in any given area doing the talking - with the rest of the masses listening, with what we now have.

On any given day, it feels to me like 50 to a hundred of us are ushered into a large conference room. The doors are then closed behind us, and at the count of three, everyone starts talking simultaneously. Then, after 30 seconds or so - or 140 characters if your main frame of reference is now twitter - everyone stops. We were all speaking at once, but did anybody actually hear anything?

Perhaps, with the give and take, back & forth nature of twitter and facebook conversations, and message board and chat room discussions, this would be a better analogy: the 50 or 100 of us line the walls of the conference room. One person begins by turning to the person next to them and sharing a short message. (remember this game?) Then, the process repeats itself until the message has circled the room. When it arrives back at the starting point, does it bear ANY resemblance to the original information?

And it's not like this process is limited to those of us who do this because of passion as opposed to a paycheck.

Check-out sports talk radio or even the extended weekend local TV sportscasts. For every actual sports news maker - athlete, coach, administrator - who is heard from, there are nearly as many interviews and discussions with other reporters, commentators and columnists. The Tom and Jerry Show on KOOK-AM 980 - with columnist Bob Stone from the Daily Diss sitting-in for the vacationing Jerry - are now joined by a 'good friend of the show' - Harold Hyperbole from ZNN/PU.com to break down Madonna's halftime performance at the Superbowl.

Again I wonder, if everyone is talking, who is listening?

There are no right or wrong answers here, just a question from one of those voices in the chorus.

Coming Attractions: TV Sportscasting Greatest Hits

Several years ago, my daughter Tiffany had a Christmas request for me. She wanted a clip of some of my TV sportscasting work to show her kids when they asked "what did Grandpa Mike used to do?"

It would have been easy to schlock-out a couple of things from my videotaped archives, but schlock is not my style, so I got some video editing software to try and dress it up a little bit. Think of deciding to make a scrapbook and instead of buying a cheap-o scrapbook, a bottle of rubber cement and a pair of scissors and having at it, going to a scrapbooking specialty store and getting all the fancy accoutrements and determining to create an organized, pleasing presentation.

I rolled-up my sleeves and went to work. I spent literally MONTHS cataloging almost 20 years of work at seven different stations, learning the software and working on my masterpiece.

Well, one day my computer was running really slowly, locking-up and generally irritating me to no end. As I often do with technology and machinery, I decided to go all 'alpha male' and show my PC who was boss. I don't remember exactly what all was involved, but when the disc cleanup, the defragging of files and a complete system restore were completed, I was horrified to discover that all those months of video editing had gone *poof* into the great digital beyond. Talk about seeing a grown man cry.

Rather than dive right back in, I sulked and pouted for over a year, but my daughter - and my little angel grandkids - persisted, so I re-installed the editing suite in December and started again. Those who know me best know that I tend to err towards being a perfectionist when it comes to creative endeavors, so this project will probably stretch over most of 2012 as I continue to learn and master this editing software and get things just the way I want them. 

When it's finished, I will burn DVDs for permanent keeping, get a nice DVD labeling or engraving program and deliver something I can be proud to leave behind.

In the meantime, here is a small taste...