Y.'s injured Niu knows football

Philip Niu is what's right about BYU's experiment with athletics. He simply gets it.

Niu is a natural-born leader and finely tuned athlete. He stands 6-foot-4, weighs 243 pounds and is as fast as many wide receivers with the body of a big tight end. He's uniquely gifted with soft hands, an eye for the ball and may be the best at his position in BYU's football program.

Trouble is, Niu is on the sidelines with a sore knee and nobody knows when he can play. He hasn't practiced in 15 days. BYU's opener is just nine days away.

In 2004, if Niu's status doesn't change, it will hurt the Cougars.

But as long as he's on campus, he doesn't hurt BYU at all.

Niu serves on the Mountain West Conference Student Athletic Advisory Committee. He's also on BYU's Student Athlete Advisory Council. He travels all over the region giving inspirational and motivational speeches to youths. On occasion, Niu finds himself in places like Wichita, Kansas, speaking to 300 teens at a stake girls camp like he did on July 23.

"He was absolutely fabulous," declared Helen Orr, an LDS stake Young Women's president in Wichita who called BYU for a guest speaker from the athletic department.

"We wanted to get BYU soccer player Aleisha Cramer Rose, but she wasn't available. They told us they had a 22-year-old returned missionary football player named Phillip Niu available. I hesitated, thinking 300 teenage girls and a 6-5 gorgeous football player would be too much of a distraction.

"But he came out, delivered a great and powerful message about living up to standards and not settling for less. Our young women are still talking about it, and it's been six weeks. He represented himself so well. The girls went away using him as role model, somebody to shoot for and a pretty high one at that. Our girls went home and started comparing some of the guys they've been dating and said, 'Ooh, not so good.' "

Orr was so impressed with Niu, when her group of friends came to BYU's Education Week on Aug. 16 in Provo, they called Niu for a reunion. "I would adopt him if I could. I'd let him marry any of my daughters. We fell in love with him in an instant when he came to our camp."

Niu, who is part Tongan, hails from Gilbert, Ariz., where he excelled in sports but put off his career at Colorado State while he served an LDS mission to Atlanta. Upon his return, he decided to enroll at BYU, where he played last season as a freshman.