Vai's View: Like father, like sons

Like father, like son.

In Scott Collie's case, make that sons. Youngest son Dylan will complete the trifecta as the last of the three Collie boys to follow their dad to play at BYU when he arrives at the Provo campus this fall after signing a letter of intent on Wednesday.

It would be enough for most to have one son play Division I football, but to sire THREE is remarkable. The most famous of those sons, Austin, became the most prolific receiver in BYU history. Austin Collie holds school records for career receiving yards, touchdowns and is second in receptions — in only THREE years — before bolting early for the NFL, where he's become a star in Indianapolis.

Incredibly, all of Scott and Nicci Collie's kids have made it to college on sports scholarships. The youngest child, Cameron, is only 12 and may get there yet. Daughter Taylore was good enough to play golf for the Utah Valley University women's team in Orem. She quit after her sophomore year to marry and move with her husband, Trenson Akana, to Hawaii where he was finishing up a master's program at the University of Hawaii and she completed her degree at BYU-Hawaii.

"My dad's an eight handicap," Taylore told me on the phone as she put her two-week newborn down for a nap in their Mililani, Hawaii, home. "He's a great motivator and coach, even in golf because he has a gift for boiling things down, making it simple and then calmly explaining it."

That may be true, but Scott Collie's game is still football. Since the time they could walk, Collie taught his sons Zach, Austin and Dylan how to catch a ball. As they grew older, Collie added little drills that improved their hand-eye coordination. By junior high, they were running precise routes and timing patterns most kids don't learn unless they play D-I football.

The irony is, if Scott Collie had chosen to pursue a coaching career, it's unlikely his boys would've learned the techniques that earned them BYU scholarships. "I doubt I would've had the time to work with my boys had I gone into college or pro coaching," Collie told me. "It was actually LaVell (Edwards) who talked me out of coaching. He probably encouraged some guys into coaching and others out of it depending on our circumstances. I did the right thing but every six years or so, I looked into it. It was never right."

Until now.