Itula Mili remembers well the beginning of his football career. For the first two weeks, he cried nearly every day as his father drove him to practice.
"I don't want to go," he said over and over, but his father kept driving, never saying a word.His father, Itula Sr., was a rugby player. When he migrated from his native Western Samoa to Laie, Hawaii, he developed a passion for rugby's kindred sport, American football. He decided his son would play football, whether he liked it or not, and every day the scene in the car would repeat itself.
"I kept telling him, `I don't want to go,"' recalls Mili. "I was scared. I didn't like to get hit."
Imagine that. Itula Mili (EE-too-la MEE-Lee), who grew up to be 6-foot-31/2, 235 pounds and a football star-in-the-making at BYU, was scared of being hit. There are days when he still runs scared, but imagine how defensive backs feel with Mili coming at them from all over the field, his knees churning high and hard like the former high hurdler he is.
When Mili took the first handoff of his life two weeks ago, he ran for 9 yards through the middle of the UCLA defense. It wasn't so much the yardage he gained as the way he ran that made observers sit up and take notice. His sheer acceleration was stunning for a man of such size.
"This guy's got electricity in his legs," says running back coach Lance Reynolds. "He could play anywhere."
Mili is such a rare and broad talent that BYU coaches say he could start at linebacker, free safety, tight end, wide receiver or fullback.
"He could be all-league at safety or linebacker," says assistant head coach Norm Chow. "Our defense wanted him."
But the offense took Mili and placed him at tight end. He started a few games as a freshman and then left on a mission.
Chad Lewis remembers well the beginning of his football career. It was about the time his parents gathered him and his four brothers for a family meeting and, in the words of their father, Dr. Roger Lewis, "gave them permission not to play football." Based on his own bad experiences, Roger actually urged his sons not to play organized sports, period. He believed such sports were too intense and competitive, and there was a chance they'd be stuck with some screaming, quasi-military ex-jock as a coach.
"It's laughable now," says Roger. "I came up with what I called the Lewis Plan. I told them that instead of organized sports, I would commit to taking them camping, hiking, anything they wanted to do. It had zero appeal. They were not even a little interested."
All five boys played football. "As soon as my oldest brother started, it was a landslide," says Chad. "Then my parents were very supportive."
Ironically, after completing a church mission, Chad lost interest in football anyway and decided to concentrate on his classwork and becoming a doctor like his father. As a player at Orem High School, he was judged to be too skinny by college recruiters, but during his mission Lewis added two inches and 55 pounds, bringing him to 6-6, 235 pounds.
Convinced to try out for the Cougars, he joined the team as a walk-on. Coaches encouraged him to stick with it; he promised to try it for a year. After that, he either had a scholarship, he told them, or he would quit.
When the next season started, he not only had a scholarship, he was getting playing time. A few months later he made a spectacular one-handed catch in the end zone at the 1993 Holiday Bowl.
The following season he was BYU's No. 1 tight end. That was the year another tight end returned from a mission and rejoined the Cougars. His name was Itula Mili, and now the Cougars had a problem.
What's a football coach to do when he has two players of equally outstanding ability, but they play the same position? What can he do with two players who are almost mirror images of each other - both tall, both 235 pounds, both fast, both returned missionaries, both juniors, both leapers and former high jumpers, both blessed with good hands and uncanny athleticism for their size, both mediocre blockers, both possessing nine letters in their names - and both tight ends.
Even Mili recognized that the Cougars had a dilemma. When he returned from his mission, he heard about this walk-on kid named Lewis who was making a name for himself. Not only had Lewis taken his job, he had taken the No. 96 jersey that Mili had worn before his mission. Mili watched videotape of Lewis to size up his rival.
"I saw him make a one-handed catch in the Holiday Bowl, and I thought, . . . this guy's good," recalls Mili. "I think I'll just back him up."
Actually, Mili and Lewis shared the job equally last season. Mili had 33 catches, Lewis 32, and both demonstrated spectacular athleticism. Once a UTEP defender went low to tackle Lewis, and Lewis simply hurdled him and kept running. In a tight game against Fresno State, Mili turned a 10-yard pass into a 68-yard touchdown by outsprinting defensive backs.
Their play convinced BYU coaches of one thing: "We had to find a way to get them both on the field at the same time," says Chow.
During the off-season the Cougars moved Mili to what is essentially an H-back position, a running back who lines up in a variety of positions - slotback, wide receiver, tight end, running back. In the past, the Cougars have had to use a variety of rotating players to fill this one position, depending on where the position lined up each play. But Mili is so versatile that he can play the position full time. He debuted as a ballcarrier in the second game against UCLA and broke a couple of long runs with a slashing, high-stepping style that reminded some of former NFL great Roger Craig.
"If anything I was just scared," said Mili. "They say if you go slow you get hurt. I was running for my life."
Although the Cougars have struggled on offense this season, nobody can fault Mili and Lewis. After three games, they rank 1-2 among Cougar receivers: Mili has 20 catches for 234 yards and twotouchdowns, Lewis 15 catches for 245 yards and one TD.
At times defenses seem powerless to stop them. If their height gives them a big advantage over defenders, their leaping ability makes it simply unfair. Both cleared 6-4 in the high jump in high school. Then there's the matter of their speed - Mili in the 4.5-4.6 range, Lewis 4.6 and change.
As a result, Mili and Lewis create big mismatches for the defense: Linebackers are too slow and defensive backs too small to cover them. Against San Diego State, Lewis dragged three defenders some 10 yards before they could bring him down. Mili outsprinted linebackers and cornerbacks to haul in a 34-yard touchdown pass against UCLA.
Their play makes you wonder why the Cougars didn't get them both on the field together sooner. "We weren't sure what we had last year," says Chow.
As a boy, Mili idolized the local football hero in Laie, a neighbor two doors down named Lakei Heimuli, who would later play for BYU and the Chicago Bears and whose brother, Hema, now starts for the Cougars. Every day after school, Mili and the other neighborhood boys ran to Heimuli's house to watch Heimuli train in his yard. When Mili's football coach asked him why he wrapped tape around his thighs, he answered, "Because I want to be like Lakei Heimuli."
Mili was already a versatile athlete, all-state in basketball, track and football. His football coach made him join the track team (coerced again), and Mili became a 14-second hurdler and the state's top high jumper. Kahuku High didn't have a high jump pit, so Mili trained by jumping up to touch a football goal post 10 times daily. He arrived at meets early to practice the Fosbury Flop technique in an actual pit. Despite such meager training conditions, Mili won the high jump at the Hawaii state championship meet.
He was still a raw football player when he joined BYU, but his combination of speed and athleticism made him one of the country's top prep recruits. Washington, Oregon, Colorado and BYU had sought his signature.
In high school Mili ran basically one pass rout: long. "They'd just throw up the ball, and I'd run under it," he says. This hardly prepared him for the Cougars' offense. At BYU, Mili was overwhelmed by the complex array of routes and reads that the BYU system demanded of him.
"It took me awhile," says Mili. "In two-a-days, Chow yelled at me all the time."
He started three early games that year, against UCLA, Penn State and Air Force, but then slipped to second team. It was just too much too fast. After spending the next two years on a mission in New Zealand, Mili returned to BYU and got his first look at Lewis. If Mili was impressed with his rival, at least the feeling was mutual.
"In two-a-days I saw him make a cut, and then he had this big burst of speed," says Lewis. "I thought, `Where did that come from? ' I told him, `Dude, you got to teach me your moves.' It's all natural for him."
Even Reynolds, who is given to understatement, gushes over Mili. "Itula is about as good as we ever get at any position. He can run, he can catch, he can juke. This guy can play. He's an athletic cat. We weren't sure he could do those things at first because he's so big, but he can do anything."
If nothing else, the five Lewis brothers were of one mind as they grew up. All of them were Eagle scouts. All of them were A and B students. All of them were avid water and snow skiers. All of them served missions for their church (Dave and Mike were missionary companions). All of them played football.
Dave was a linebacker at BYU. Mike started on the defensive line at Utah. Jason played for Orem High. Todd will join Chad and the Cougars next season.
Except for Mike, none of the Lewises began college with a football scholarship. They were late bloomers, which discouraged football recruiters. They all added significant height and weight soon after graduating from high school. Hence, Dave, Chad and Todd are all walk-ons.
Having witnessed the transformation of Mike from skinny to massive during his mission, Ute coaches invited Chad to join the Utes when he returned from his mission. But the Utah coaching staff was fired in the meantime, and Chad's missionary companion/cousin, Lawrence Harmer, a current BYU football player, urged him to join the Cougars. Lewis enrolled at BYU for the 1993 winter semester, but not to play football.
He joined the BYU track team instead and competed in the high jump, but he found himself training side by side with football players in the fieldhouse. Soon he was running pass routes with the quarterbacks and receivers, and Harmer and his teammates urged him to join the team.
"I knew what a commitment football was and the chances of walking on and playing were slim," he says. "The coaches told me to be patient."
Some patience. About two months later Lewis caught a touchdown pass in the spring game. On the fourth day of fall camp, he was made the No. 2 tight end. On the fifth day he was given a scholarship. He made his first start in the sixth game against Notre Dame. He made his second start in the Holiday Bowl against Ohio State.
Lewis, who is versatile enough to have performed in such disparate events as the long jump and discus in high school, has continued to make spectacular use of his 38-inch vertical leap (aside from his predilection for performing backflips from a standing position). He has blocked four field goal attempts and one extra point in little more than two seasons, and he has made several leaping catches that another tight end wouldn't have made.
"Chad is as good as any tight end we've had around here," says Chow. "That's saying something. If we had 22 players like him we'd never lose."
As it is, the Cougars have to settle for two of them. Before the season is finished, defenses might find that to be more than enough.