Y.'s scoring streak may end Saturday

Memo to Utah fans:

This may be the weekend of your dreams — watching your men put the hammer down on that struggling team from down south. And, as a bonus, your soaring Utes may end one of the longest-lasting offensive records in college football.

Utah's veteran defensive coordinator, Kyle Whittingham, and his bunch may be just the guys to end it.

What is it? It is this: BYU has scored in 361 consecutive games stretching back to Sept. 27, 1975, when Arizona State's defense forced a zero. It's a stately mark, always barked about. It's a storied record, which, if you think about it, is quite remarkable. But it's a lofty accomplishment that, if I read the red right, is a priority for the Utes to end. Imagine: Put the double jack down on the Cougs, then dance over their bones, snapping the sacred scoring streak.

Yup, Whittingham's crew is capable of doing it. And Gary Crowton's turnover-laden, mistake-prone drive killers are ripe to yield. The Cougs rank 104th in scoring, 96th in total offense and 108th in turnover margin nationally. Last weekend in South Bend they had seven three-and-outs.

Whittingham turns 44 on Friday. What a great gift that would be for him to return home to Provo, blocks from where he grew up and played high school and college ball, and register a shutout.

For the Cougs . . . is there anything left to stop such a thing?

"That will be hard to do, regardless," Kyle's brother Cary said of stopping the Cougar scoring streak that began when the Vietnam War ended and none of the current players were alive. "BYU might be struggling, but they're a team that can still be pretty good — good enough to score."

Cary, a Provo city policeman, is four years younger than Kyle and loyal to his brother, even if he owns a 1984 national championship ring, which he earned as the starting middle linebacker on that BYU squad.

Shutout? Don't put it past Kyle. He's got all kinds of tricks. It's in his blood.

At the funeral of his father, Fred, a few weeks ago, Kyle recounted the story of how he pulled a trick on his dad as a tyke. Big Fred and Kyle were playing catch in the yard one day when Kyle missed the ball and it rolled away into stinky leftovers of what a dog piled up on the lawn. Kyle, always the trickster, picked up the ball with care to avoid the spot where the new coating got applied to the pigskin. He then tossed it to his dad. Fred was both shocked, stunned and ticked with the trick.

That's Kyle.

Cary remembers when Big Fred coached at BYU and the dad and Whittingham brothers would go to Lake Powell with then strength and conditioning coach Chuck Stiggins, a friend. Kyle, Cary and brothers Freddie and Brady would pull a trick on Stiggins. They'd dig deep holes in the sandy beach, cover them with sticks and camouflage their traps. Stiggins would end up falling in all of them, to the delight of the brothers, led by Kyle.

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