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Nate Meikle – “We’re going to take care of business this weekend.” |
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JaredCowley | Monday, October 23, 2006, 3:51 pm
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Transcribed by Jim Vallen
COUGARBLUE
KNZ’s The Manly Morning Show (6 A.M to 10 A. M. weekday mornings on 1280 The Zone, 1280 AM Salt Lake; 960 AM Utah County) aired an interview this morning with BYU receiver Nate Meikle. This interview was taped from this past weekend from Salt Lake City’s CBS affiliate KUTV (channel 2) “Talking Sports” program with Dave Fox.
Nathan Meikle is a 5-9, 181 lb senior wide receiver for BYU. He hails from Idaho Falls and came to BYU as a walk-on from Snow Junior College in Ephraim, UT. Thus far this season he ranks eighth in receiving for the team with nine catches for 99 yards, an 11 yard average per catch. He’s sixth on the team in all-purpose yards averaging about 43 yards a game. He has served as the punt returner for the team this year and has 14 returns for 157 yards and a 11.2 yard average. That ranks him number one in punt returns in the Mountain West Conference and fifteenth nationally.
DF: “First of all I want to know something. You came to the Y two plus years ago. You’re 5-9 181 lbs and now you’re probably the best conditioned player on the team. How does that happen?”
NM: “I don’t know about that statement, but it was a lot of dieting, Coach Omer’s [Coach Jay Omer – Conditioning Coach] workouts and walking through the BYU locker room and being embarrassed. Looking at all the cut-up guys there just told me that I had to do it.”
DF: “Is it true that you had a 4.9 40 at that point?”
NM: “Yea, 4.93.”
DF: “Wow and now you’re to what?”
NM: “The last time I timed myself I was down to a 4.53. A lot of people might not believe that, but it’s true.”
DF: “You’re also the teams punt returner. You had a career best thirty-eight yarder this past weekend vs. UNLV. What makes for a good punt returner and how did you get the job originally?”
NM: “To be honest, I didn’t want to do it at first. Coach Mendenhall put me back there and I never really liked punt returns and I debated whether or not I should drop it so he’d kick me off the team, but I couldn’t do it because he was right there with me and I kept catching and catching and I just worked my way into the roll.
As far as what makes a good punt returner, it’s the team. You can see Saturday on that thirty-eight yard return that I wasn’t touched until I was being tackled thirty-eight yards down the field. So it’s the guys up front making their blocks for you.”
DF: “You were a running back your whole life until you got to BYU, so you probably have a pretty good take on one Curtis Brown, who is now the number two on the all-time BYU rushing list and probably will be number one when the season is over. In your opinion, what makes him so great from one running back to another?”
NM: “You can’t say enough about Curtis Brown. Cameron [Jensen] and me talk about it constantly. Curtis is always falling forward. He’s deceptive. He’s got just a little bit of a different style. He’s got a way of making the first guy miss and then the second guy. He runs through arm tackles and then once again, he’s always falling forward when he’s tackled.”
DF: “John Beck, your quarterback, says that you look like an Idaho Spud out there. You’ve had reasonable success out there as wide receiver, but you have to be annoyed as a wide receiver who loves the football, the fact that there are so many weapons on this team for him sometimes. Right?”
NM: “You know, it is bittersweet a bit. You look at the distribution on the team and it’s right where it should be. Curtis has the most touches and Jonny [Harline] and Fui [Vakapuna] with also Zac Collie, Matt Allen, Mike Reed and McKay Jacobson that all have more touches than I have. I can’t fault the coach for that. I think the distribution is perfect. Yea, it would be nice to get the ball more, but on this team I couldn’t be happier.”
DF: “You’re also good in the classroom. You’re semi-finalist for the 2006 Draddy Trophy, which rewards the top student athlete in the country. You’ve got to be the smartest guy on the team, right?”
NM: “I’m definitely not the smartest guy on the team.
DF: “Come on!”
NM: “There’s a handful of guys that are smarter. Maybe I like to study more and I’m a bigger nerd than some of the guys on the team and that’s why I’ve been able to have a higher GPA. And that’s probably the reason, but I’m definitely not the smartest.”
DF: “You have a 3.8 GPA right?”
NM: “3.8? Yes, but it might be sliding just a bit at the end of this semester, but right around there.”
DF: “Who’s smarter than you then?”
NM: “Right on the top of my head, Andrew Stacey [6-3, 219 lb senior linebacker from Cleveland, OH]. He’s a bio-statistics major who is preparing to go to medical school. He’s brilliant.”
DF: “Let’s talk about Air Force, the next opponent for you guys coming up in Colorado Springs on Saturday. This game had looked like the conference game of the year until Air Force lost to San Diego State, a team that you guys actually dissected already this year. What’s going on and is it almost more pressure to close this out and win the conference title because it looks it’s everybody and then you guys?”
NM: “Every team is in our way. We’ve got to take it one game at a time. I was a little surprised that San Diego knocked them off, but at the same time, when we scouted San Diego State, we knew that they had a lot of talent and that they were just struggling together to put their team together. It looks like they finally achieved that against Air Force. At the Division one level there is a lot of talent on every team and Air Force is just in our way. We have to take it one game at a time. We plan on playing against them just as we have for every other team that we have prepared for in the conference. We’re going to take care of business this weekend.”
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