Hall acting right out of the PR book
Max Hall is doing and saying things right out of a public relations book in wake of his big game. He doesn’t need any help from Jeff Reynolds, the football team?s official spokesman, whose final workday for the program was Saturday.
(Bronco Mendenhall presented Reynolds with the game ball in front of the media after the UCLA game).
After Saturday’s win over UCLA, Hall’s first inclination was to credit his teammates, Dennis Pitta, Austin Collie, Michael Reed and Harvey Unga. Then he poured praise on BYU’s offensive line.
On Monday, Hall received a national honor from the Walter Camp Foundation as the player of the week. Ditto for the MWC.
Hall maintained his praise for the other guys in a morning press conference and afternoon practice.
“He’ll be the first to tell you, the honors don’t mean much to him and he’ll give credit to the offense, not himself,” said Jan Jorgensen.
Brandon Doman was giddy after the UCLA game. When Hall was interviewed on the field by the Versus crew, Doman came by and patted him on the shoulder. After a very brief locker room meeting as a team, players split up for interviews and Doman came out of the locker room and sought out Hall to talk to him.
“I think he’s an all-time guy. I’ve known that since I first met him and recruited him. We wanted him here bad. We’ve worked hard as a staff to get him to come here and I think he’s just that kind of a guy.”
Of the stadium record 7 TD passes, Doman explained where Hall is right now.
” You don’t play well without confidence and right now he’s playing with a ton of confidence and he’s making good decisions for the most part. He knows he can throw it to Harvey, he can throw it to Dennis, he can throw it to Michael and he can throw it to Austin and whomever and he feels to and he is really confident.”
It is in this context that Doman gave me this quote that appeared in Sunday’s column and I?ll provide the rest of the interview here:
“I don’t think BYU has had this much overall stacked talent at the skill positions offensively maybe ever. We’ve know that as an offensive staff and we’ve spent a lot of time over the past nine months on how to get those guys the ball and today was a game plan we spent a lot of time working on and our guys executed it really well.
“We say a lot about these skill guys. The bottom line as well is we have five bona fide studs playing offensive line right now and you ask UCLA and Washington and they’ll tell you the same thing, we have five studs. We’re still coming together as a team, we’re still gelling and coming together but I couldn’t be more happy.”
“I don’t think our guys had a chip on their shoulder, they just wanted to play their best… we were hungry, we were anxious to play.. I think Washington gave us a great game last week. The other thing is, UCLA is going to go out of here feeling bad they gave us the ball and you can’t do that against a good football team. But we knew that coming in, if we gave them the ball, we’d be in trouble.”
Max Hall Heisman talk? Starting to trickle in.
In Rick Neuheisel’s press conference Monday, he said:
“The BYU team we saw yesterday can play with anybody. As experienced as they are in that offense, and (quarterback) Max Hall is as good a quarterback I’ve seen in college in a long time, at least the way he played yesterday.”
Here are some links to thoughts by folks across the country:
And then to see a another take, Go here.
And,
You might like this take from Inside UCLA.com found here.
Finally, Dennis Dodd on CBSsportsline.com had Hall his No. 3 Heisman candidate right here.
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In other news, Limhi Latu told me at Monday’s practice that his son Wayne Latu’s premature daughter was released from the intensive care unit at Primary Children’s Hospital on Sunday and is home with Wayne and his wife. “The surgeon told us it was a miracle and the nurses said they couldn’t believe how fast she has healed.”
Latu’s daughter was born with part of her digestive tract outside of her body and had immediate surgery to make more room in her abdominal cavity for the problem.
Dallas Reynolds got the day off from center duties. He’s been battling a sore foot for weeks, an irritation of a tendon in his arch.
At Saturday’s UCLA game, a handful of recruits made unofficial visits to see the game. They were allowed on the sidelines before the game and then had access to the team locker room before and after the Cougar win.
Here is a list of those recruits:
QB Jake Heaps, Issaqua, Wash.
WR Mitch Matthews, Beaverton, Ore.
TE Richard Wilson, Spanish Fork
LB L.T. Filianga, Bingham
S Craig Bills, Timpview
OG Ryan Mulitalo, Hunter
DB Chris Badger, Timpview
OL Tui Chrichon, Timpview
CB Chris Washington, Northridge
TE Bronson Kaufusi, Timpview