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PROVO – BYU offensive lineman James Empey wanted to clarify one thing after the Cougars formalized a Top 20 game with Coastal Carolina on Thursday.
Cougars mean it when they say, “Any team, anytime, anywhere.”
A week after the failure of a high-profile (and oft-criticized) deal to play the Pac-12 enemy in Washington in Seattle, the No.8 Cougars (No.13 CFP) will have the opportunity to back that claim. Saturday on the road against No. 8. 14 Coastal Carolina (3:30 p.m. MST, ESPNU).
BYU is not dodging anyone as the Cougars travel across the country to face one of the country’s only two other 9-0 teams in one of two domestic games with opponents ranked in the Top 25 AP.
“We’ve said from the start that we want to play,” said Empey. “Whatever people want to say, they can say it. We’re just really excited about this game and how it came together so quickly.
“What happened in the past doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Fake news,” added the eloquent and oft-cited Troy Warner. BYU Replaces Fake Duck Story with Chanticleers, # 18 CFP Rankings.
“I just think it’s something we weren’t really concerned about,” Warner said. “Everyone in the locker room wants to play any team in the country. We weren’t dodging anyone. We want to play with anyone.
“We’ve all seen this as fake news. We know that’s not how BYU is handled here.”
Coastal Carolina (9-0) will be the highest ranked opponent BYU has faced all year, just ahead of Boise State, who was ranked No.20 nationally before the Cougars’ 51-14 win over the Broncos.
Make no mistake, the Chanticleers are eager to prove they are BYU’s equal this year. Both schools place in the nation’s top 40 for points on offense and defense in the Chants decisive season, which will include a berth in the Sun Belt title game on December 19.
Historically, the differences between the two schools have been marked, but that is to be expected for a program like Coastal Carolina which started playing football in 2003 and made the leap to the Football Bowl subdivision in 2015.
That’s what makes Saturday’s game, which will feature ESPN’s “College GameDay”, all the more important to the Chanticleers. They will host their first Top 25 opponent at Brooks Stadium.
“Obviously, we know the brand that BYU has: a huge success and a respect for the institution,” said CCU athletic director Matt Hogue. “People know this brand very well. So that we have the opportunity to play against them and show the nation what we think about our program, because our program is a rising brand in varsity athletics, too; it’s great to have this opportunity and to play on this stage.
“That’s a big part of why we do what we do in this industry.”
Here are five things to know about the Chanticleers before Saturday afternoon.
Coastal Carolina is really good
First of all, this team is good. Coastal Carolina averages 38.7 points per game and allows just 16.3 points, the 11th highest score nationally.
Chanticleers have a lot of speed and skill, but they lack one of BYU’s biggest perks: size. Among the other undersized players, Coastal Carolina starts 5-foot-9 center fifth-year lineman Sam Thompson, who started all nine games of his senior campaign a year after leading an offense that racked up 400 yards or more attack five times. and converted 23 of 29 fourth-hitting attempts in 2019.
He can cause a cruel image standing next to BYU’s 6-4 tackle Khyiris Tonga or 6-4 runners Zac Dawe and Alden Tofa. But Thompson also anchored an offensive line tasked with protecting Grayson McCall, the red-shirted freshman who threw for 1,747 yards with 20 touchdowns and just one interception.
“We pray a lot right now, and I know they are too.” Because they’re Mormons, “said Jamey Chadwell, head coach of Coastal Carolina.” They’re really good offensively and really good defensively. Their ranking is what they are because they dominate the guys.
“They’re huge, they’re big and they’re physical. It’s the biggest challenge, it’s the size they have and the athletes they have. But our team is resilient, they were excited at the idea to play Liberty, and I know they’re excited to play BYU. “
This season is not the most successful in Coastal Carolina sporting history; the Chanticleers won the College World Series in 2016, so nothing short of a national championship will never surpass it. But Coastal is revealed to be more than a baseball school, and more than a one-stroke wonder, in the third season of Chadwell, taking over from former TD Ameritrade CEO Joe Moglia in 2017.
Singers have the most fun
BYU head basketball coach Mark Pope likes to say his team has the “best locker room in the country,” with downpours of Gatorade after the win and pranks ranging from coaches and players to club staff. support for Provo.
With all due respect to Pope, the Chanticleers football program, who has been a member of the Football Bowl subdivision since 2016, presents a viable challenger to this claim.
There was a lot to celebrate and each victory had its own celebration. Chadwell has an analogy for every game week, and a celebration for the game that week ensued in the Chanticleers’ 9-0 season.
Sometimes this celebration has included an actual broadsword cutting through the air. On another occasion, the Chants put on an incredibly complex pro wrestling match – including an ode to CCU alum “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
Coastal Carolina doesn’t just win and, in some cases, win big in its most successful season at FBS level; they also have fun doing it.
OK, but what is a singer?
Many mascots come from many places: the story of a school, the etiquette of a sports writer or a marketing-based branding exercise, to name a few.
But Coastal Carolina’s mascot comes from the most unique place in all college sports: Chaucer.
The singer derives from the poet Geoffrey Chaucer “The Singer and the Fox”, a fable of the classic “Tales of the Nun’s Priest”, and was adapted for college in the early 1960s. Until then, athletics coastal was called “Trojans”.
So what is a singer? Here is Chaucer, in his own words, on the rooster “whose song was not equal throughout the land.”
“His voice was happier than the merry organ playing in church, and his singing from his resting place was more trustworthy than a clock,” Chaucer wrote. “Its comb was redder than fine coral and twirled like a castle wall, its beak was black and shiny like a jet, and its legs and toes were like azure. Her fingernails were whiter than a lily, and her feathers were like burnished gold.
Your move, Cosmo.
The Chants teal field is ?
BYU has played on a visually disruptive football surface before: the legendary Boise blue turf which has also become iconic in the sport and purely representative of the Boise State brand.
But the Broncos’ blue stronghold in Boise isn’t the only non-green field in the country. There’s the red turf in east Washington, the purple field in central Arkansas, and the gray-and-green field in eastern Michigan that regularly makes ESPN’s home shows look like a replay of the classic. Tobey Maguire / Reese Witherspoon, “Pleasantville”.
On Saturday, BYU will face its toughest challenge of the season on another visually stunning masterpiece: the Coastal Carolina Teal Field, commonly referred to as the “Surf Turf.” The Chanticleers installed the unique turf in 2015, and the all-teal all over the college inspired the fledgling national movement that is #TealNation.
Coastal Carolina Teal Turf Coating @CCUJoeMogliapic.twitter.com/I3DFu6dDVC
– Coastal Carolina Athletics (@GoCCUsports) January 23, 2015
And the mules
Last but not least, this is what makes Coastal Carolina stand out the most – and it’s not the standings, the high-powered offense, the one-of-a-kind mascot or the locker room celebrations.
These are the mules.
Look up and down the list and you’ll see a common thread running through several key players: business up front, party back.
This is how the Chanticleers define their season – unless, of course, BYU gives them a decisive win for the season.
“This is news for me,” BYU’s Warner said. “But more power for them.”
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