This is what you do when the athletic director is your father, and the coach is your father's old teammate and you're driven to begin with, and you want to prove you're on the team because you're the real deal and not because of connections.
With six months left in your Mormon Church mission in a tiny mountain town in Ecuador, you get up each morning at 5:30. You salvage the axle of an old truck and hoist it upon your shoulders to perform a regimen of squats and bench presses. You find old cans and pour concrete into them and use them to do arm curls. You run up and down the surrounding hillsides, with the starting line set at an oxygen-thin 8,500 feet above sea level. You throw the football with your companion while the natives look on with their mouths agape.
And then exactly one day after you return from your two-year mission, you participate in team conditioning drills and outperform most of your teammates, and coach Barry Lamb is saying, "What have you been doing the last two years?" And suddenly there is no more talk of redshirting you for the season, as they would most missionaries, because it's supposed to take time to scrape off the rust of a mission.
This is what you do if you're Chris Hale and your father is Val, the BYU athletic director who was once a receiver for a quarterback named Gary Crowton, who is now BYU's head coach, and you want to play wide receiver like your dad without charges of favoritism.
It turns out, the boss' kid can play, if there were ever truly any doubts. There isn't anyone who is saying he doesn't deserve to be part of the rotation at wide receiver. In the season opener, he caught four passes, and only a defensive pass interference penalty prevented him from hauling in a fifth reception for a long gain.
His father looked on, pleased and relieved. "I was real sensitive about it," says Val. "I thought everyone would assume he's playing because he's my kid."
Then on a couple of occasions he overheard players talking in the locker room — Hey, the Hale kid can play. He's tough to cover. "I was glad to hear he was earning the respect of his teammates," says Val.
Chris could have gone elsewhere and saved himself the aggravation. At Orem High, he set a single-game state record of 311 receiving yards on just 10 receptions. Utah State wanted him. So did Yale and other Ivy League schools who were impressed by his 3.9 GPA and his selection as a Football Foundation scholar athlete.
But he wanted to attend his father's school. BYU coaches came up with a plan: He would sit out the first season, begin his mission in the spring and then return to play defensive back. But come autumn, Hale not only decided he wanted to play right away, he wanted to play wide receiver.
The scholarships were gone, his father explained; he would have to walk on. LaVell Edwards, the head coach at the time, told Chris he would give him a chance to play wide receiver, but if it didn't work out he'd play defensive back when he returned from his mission. After the second day of practice, Edwards walked into Val's office and told him, "Chris is never going to play defense. He's too good on offense."
His father prepared Chris for the season, reminding him that freshmen don't play much except on scout teams and don't make travel squads — none of which happened. One of the regular receivers blew out a knee; Hale became the team's fifth in the rotation. In the first game of his college career — which was also the first game of his father's term as athletic director — he caught the game-winning touchdown pass with a little over a minute left to beat Washington on national TV. He was on the field only because the starter had to leave the field for a few plays because of cramps. Hale wound up playing in every game that season, although he caught only four passes.
"When I was a freshman I heard the jokes — 'your dad's the A.D,' " says Chris. "A couple of players wouldn't use my name; they called me Val." After returning from his mission, Chris met with Crowton, and they discussed the situation — "We both brought it up," says Chris. "He said he wouldn't treat me any differently than any other player, and I said I didn't want him to." Says Val, "It was helpful that he had played his freshman year and made some big plays. If he hadn't, it would have been more awkward. But I've told Gary the same thing I told LaVell, if he deserves to play, play him; if he doesn't, don't play him. I told them, 'Look, your job is on the line; don't be playing favorites. You need to win. Go with your best players."
Chris's size (5-foot-9, 180 pounds) makes him even more vulnerable to charges of favoritism, but he plays much bigger. On a strength index that BYU uses to compare relative strength, Hale is one of the strongest players on the team, pound for pound. He squats 500 pounds, benches 320. He also has a vertical leap of 36 inches and 4.3 speed.
If that isn't enough to win respect, he has a relentless work ethic. Since returning from his mission in April of last year, Hale didn't miss a day of voluntary training until he attended a family reunion this summer. Which might account for his physique and high level of fitness. During a workout this fall, reporters told Hale, "We just took a vote and we voted Chris as the most ripped on the team."
"Chris is just the type of young man who wants to prove he can do something," says Val. "If you tell him he can't do something, he's going to show you he can." Even if it means lifting truck axles to do it.
E-mail: drob@desnews.com