Just start calling BYU receiver and punt returner Parker Kingston “Little Golden Richards.”
On Saturday, Kingston ripped off a 55-yard punt return for a touchdown against UCF in a 41-21 regular-season win at LaVell Edwards Stadium. It put BYU up 24-14, part of a 41-to-7 run for the No. 11 Cougars.
Kingston’s return looked just like Golden Richards on that play. It was the speed, the acceleration, the explosive ability to cover ground in a short amount of time.
But it was more than that.
It was his blonde hair hanging out of the back of his helmet.
It was his track background, his sprinter speed.
It was also his 46-yard touchdown reception, a brilliant, streaking catch-in-stride run down the field straight through the UCF defense.
Well, about half a century ago, folks in Utah remember Golden Richards as one of the greatest athletes in Utah high school history.
His brother Doug, a retired attorney for the Utah attorney general’s office and former teammate of Kresimir Cosic, said he likes the nickname Little Golden Richards for Kingston.
“My brother Golden would be honored for Parker to have that nickname. He would have loved Parker’s speed, toughness, his great punt returns and his flowing blonde hair coming out of his helmet like Golden had with the Dallas Cowboys,” said Doug.
Golden Richards ran a personal 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash while at Granite High in Salt Lake City. He was one of the fastest 40-yard dash football players of all time. Richards died in February 2024, but memories of his stardom on every level of football remain.
Richards recorded four punt return touchdowns in college (all during his 1971 junior season at BYU, where he led the nation with that mark and earned All-WAC honors) and two in the NFL (one in the 1973 postseason for Dallas and one in the 1975 regular season, tying him for the NFL lead that year).
One summer during camp for the Dallas Cowboys, Richards beat teammate Bob Hayes in the 40-yard dash. Hayes set the world record for the 100-yard dash in 1962 at 9.1 and was labeled by Jesse Owens as the world’s fastest human.
Richards was taller than 5-foot-11 Kingston, at 6-1.
Now, of course, Kingston isn’t as fast as Richards, whose 9.4 he ran in high school at the Golden West Invitational in California would be a 10.2 in today’s 100 meters.
But Kingston, like Richards, does know speed.
Despite suffering from food poisoning and throwing up the night and day before Saturday’s game, Kingston scored two TDs for the Cougars, and if he hadn’t slipped and fallen on the turf on another streaking pass reception, he may have had three touchdowns.
A standout athlete at Roy High, Kingston ran a personal best time of 10.54 seconds in the 100-meter dash during his senior year. This mark came at the Utah 6A State Championships on May 21, 2022, where he won the event in a photo finish (10.533 fully timed).
He also recorded a 10.66-second time earlier that season at the BYU Invitational.
Regarding state titles in the sprints, Kingston won one: the 6A 100-meter dash title in 2022, edging out Skyridge’s Smith Snowden by 0.002 seconds in one of the fastest races in Utah high school history (six sub-11-second finishes).
Kingston placed second in the 200-meter dash at the same meet (21.33 seconds) behind Corner Canyon’s and current BYU teammate Cody Hagen, and finished fifth in both the 100-meter and 200-meter as a junior in 2021.
If Kingston can return one more punt for a TD in his BYU career, he will tie Richards for the most in school history. He has already made himself a peer with three of BYU’s greatest punt returners in James Dye (4) and Kent Oborn (3).
His three career TD returns came on Dec. 28, 2024, at the Alamo Bowl in a win over Colorado, a 64-yard touchdown; an electrifying 90-yard TD return Sept. 21 against Kansas State, and Saturday’s 55-yard score against the Knights.
As good as Kingston has been in returning punts, he’s haunted by a muffed punt in a loss at Texas Tech in early November. On a windy day in Lubbock, he took his eyes off a punt and it resulted in one of three turnovers that led to a Tech win.
No doubt Kingston will look to atone for that mistake Saturday in AT&T Stadium in a rematch with the Red Raiders in the Big 12 championship game.
There will be no big wind gusts in the Dallas Cowboys facility.
Maybe the ghost of the old Cowboy receiver and punt returner will be present.
