BYU football: Playing for Cougars a dream come true

PROVO — For freshman O'Neill Chambers, the dream of playing college football for BYU was quite literal.

The Florida native said he never dreamed of playing for the Cougars in a figurative sense — his favorite team growing up was Miami (Fla.) — but during his junior year of high school, while he slept, he had dreams that featured him playing for BYU.

"I thought it was a sign," Chambers recalled. "My dream school was Miami. But my mom didn't let me go there. I didn't care about any other school. I just came (to BYU) because I was thinking, 'If I'm having dreams about playing here, they must be telling me something.'"

When BYU hosts Northern Iowa Saturday, Chambers' dreams will be realized. He will open the season as one of the team's primary kick returners, along with Reed White. It's a role Chambers is thrilled about.

In fact, he said he has guaranteed coach Bronco Mendenhall and special teams/receivers coach Patrick Higgins that he will return a kickoff or punt for a touchdown. The Cougars haven't returned a kickoff for a touchdown in a decade — not since Mike Rigell accomplished the feat against Hawaii in 1998.

"I told the coaches last week when I found out I was first-string," he said. "I guaranteed them either a kick return or a punt return for a touchdown. They said, 'You better live up to that because if you guarantee it, you'd better do it. It hasn't been done for a while.' I said, 'Coach, I guarantee it. I know I can do it.' They said, 'You make sure you're practicing catching the ball first.'"

In high school, Chambers enjoyed returning kicks — he returned three for TDs at Harmony High — when he could. "In high school, kick returning was my specialty," he said. "Kickers and punters stopped kicking to me."

Chambers is looking forward to playing at 64,000-seat LaVell Edwards Stadium. The largest crowd he's played in front of to this point was about 2,000.

"I'm just excited because I play a lot better when there are more people watching. I jump higher, hit harder, run faster. I'm just going to go all-out and show people what I can really do," Chambers said. "There's a lot more adrenaline pumping through me during games.

Everybody will see. It's hard for me to explain. I'm just going to go out there and do it. Instead of saying what I can do, I want to show what I can do."

As much as he likes catching the ball and running with it, what he likes most, he said, is hitting.