Cougar Kickoff Countdown: 76 Days & Food Storage

With 76 days left in the countdown, we look at an excerpt from Duff Tittle's book What it means to be a Cougar. The excerpt in question is based on an incident in 1976 and involved new offensive coordinator Doug Scovil.  Scovil was the offensive coordinator for the Cougars from 1976-77, and again from 1979-80. Not being LDS, Scovil came into a different environment that required help from the players.

From What it Means to be a Cougar : Offensive coordinator Doug Scovil did not know much about the LDS Church when he got to BYU in 1976. Quarterback Gifford Nielsen educated him on aspects of the Church, including food storage for some reason. It took the Mormon Rifle by surprise when on the first day of practice Scovil used food storage as an analogy. Nielsen tells it best:

"Okay, boys," he said, "we are going to start putting in the offense." So he goes to the chalkboard, and starts writing. "We're going to put in the entire offense in two weeks, and it's just going to be repetition, repetition, repetition. We are just going to get good at it. It's a lot like food storage.:

We said, "What? Food Storage?" He said, "Just hang with me. We're going to put our year's supply of offense up here." He wrote offense in the left hand corner of the chalkboard. "Here's our year's supply," he said, and then he started to put play after play on the board. Then he told us, "During the season, we're just going to use a little of our food storage each week. So, as we put together these game plans, we'll just pick a little something out of our food storage and only use that." We all just cracked up. He was funny like that. Doug was going to figure a way to get into our world, and that's how he did it.