BYU, Utah football: Happy to be alive after rivalry game

Turned out, those guys were using the printing press my dad bought to create counterfeit money. They were traveling all over the world to acquire the special kind of ink and paper to make money. A couple of them tried to pass off phony $20 and $100 bills out of state and got caught. Just as I had suspected, those guys didn't just look like crooks. They were crooks — with lengthy rap sheets and prior convictions.

Even before my dad knew anything was afoul, the FBI had been doing undercover surveillance for months. Federal agents had investigated my dad, tapping his phone lines and tailing him wherever he went. They had determined that he had no knowledge of the counterfeiting scheme. Before some of the perpetrators were apprehended, my dad was strongly advised by the FBI to get his family out of town since they were ex-cons with a history of violence.

Eventually, all of the counterfeiters were arrested and they ended up serving relatively brief prison sentences. During a deposition, one of them testified that on Nov. 18, 1978, the owner of the business, his son and his brother-in-law stopped by the warehouse unexpectedly. He confessed that he and his cohorts were printing fake money at the time and they hastily decided that if any of the three of us were to stumble upon any evidence of their crime, they would shoot us with a gun they stored at the warehouse, throw us in a trunk and dump our bodies somewhere in the in the west desert.

Sounds like the plot of some John Grisham novel. But this wasn't fiction. That part of the story my dad never told me until until a little more than a decade later.

Now, every time I cover a BYU-Utah football game, especially at Rice-Eccles Stadium, I have flashbacks of that day I discovered The Rivalry. With the 30th anniversary of my first BYU-Utah game approaching, I can't help but think — isn't it great just to be alive to watch it?

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E-mail: jeffc@desnews.com