Former Cougar denies recruit trip talk came from him

There is a storm of finger-pointing in wake of last week’s revelation of an alleged inappropriate party that took place off BYU’s campus involving some current players when recruits were visiting Jan. 9-11 in Provo.

The latest floating around is that Utah assistant coach Kalani Sitake was “the source” of 1280 the zone sportscaster Hans Olsen, who went on the air last week to report the incident and predict a blue chip athlete from Hawaii would not sign with BYU on Feb. 4.

You can imagine how toxic this is in light of the rivalry.

I just got off the phone with Sitake, who is both livid and frustrated over such claims and he is out to stop the rumors and clear his name and that of Utah’s staff and program.

“I want to make it perfectly clear. I am not the person who has spread this talk around about recruits making visits at BYU, my former school. I would not do that and our program at Utah is above that. It is wrong, it is inaccurate and it is not right that I have been linked in this manner to these rumors. Please let it be known, it was not me.”

Sitake, who has been on the road recruiting, said he returned home to emails and phone messages that were “horrible” and accusing him of triggering information about the alleged incident. “I had no part in it,” he said. “I am innocent, naive and very frustrated.”

A little background. I have known Kalani since he played at Kirkwood High School outside of St. Louis. I covered his career at BYU and I went to school with his father, Tom Sitake, at Liahona High School in Tonga when Tom was 13 and I was just 11. I have the utmost respect for his father and for him and his brother. Over the years, that has only become stronger.

I too have heard the rumors and I’d like to help Coach Sitake out in the matter. If he says he had no part of starting, spreading or initiating this stuff, I believe him. He’s too smart to do something that would first, hurt his alma mater, and second, tarnish his current employer.

I have spoken to Hans Olsen, who also denies that Sitake had any part in his reporting of the incident at BYU.

The talk of an incident during a BYU recruit trip first surfaced, as far as I can tell, from a post in an Internet chat room that focuses on Utah, Utezone.com. This post was cut and pasted into a BYU-oriented website Cougarboard last week where it stayed for a brief time and was deleted.

Subsequently, Olsen came on the air and proclaimed he had sources that said there was trouble during a BYU recruiting trip and a key prospect would not be a Cougar. In the days that followed, I have talked and corresponded with many people about these rumors and in my discussions, Sitake’s name has cropped up, speculating where the source of this media frenzy started.

Sitake says he was never part of any such chain of information.

I believe him.