In the opening scenes of The Karate Kid II, Mr. Miyagi gets into a street fight with the evil sensei of the Cobra Kai dojo. Mr. Miyagi ultimately gets his opponent on his knees and prepares to deliver a finishing blow.
But before doing so Mr. Miyagi says, "Mercy is for the weak. We do not train to be merciful here. A man face you, he is enemy. Enemy deserve no mercy!"
Mr. Miyagi then loads up his arm to strike what we all think will be a brutal, painful, perhaps fatal, blow to the head. As his hand swings forward, he suddenly stops just before making contact and instead says "honk", squeezes his opponent's nose, and lets the bad guy slowly crumple to the ground.
BYU fans, get ready for a "honk" game this Saturday.
The No. 14 Cougars are going to easily handle the Utah Tech Trailblazers. Kalani Sitake's squad is gearing up for a Big 12 title run and to reach the College Football Playoffs. Utah Tech is coming off a 54-0 drubbing last week against Montana State.
Most experts list BYU as a seven touchdown favorite, give or take a field goal.
The goal for this game is for the Cougars first stringers to work up a sweat, get some game reps together, put it away by halftime, avoid injuries, then hand the second half over to the second stringers and guys buried on the depth chart.
Some Cougar fans are hoping Kalani Sitake's squad comes out and wins by 10 touchdowns like they did in their opener last year, destroying Portland State 69-0. BYU fans hoping for a repeat performance against Utah Tech to begin the 2026 season will be in for a disappointment.
In other words, the Cougars will simply squeeze the Trailblazers' nose, say "honk", and call it good without delivering a final, fatal blow to a lesser opponent.
And the reason Kalani Sitake's squad will have a "honk" game is because of Kalani Sitake himself.
Kalani Sitake is the ultimate nice guy who avoids embarrassing opponents
Kalani Sitake is the ultimate "nice guy" in college football and even opposing coaches hold him in the highest regard. He goes out of his way to avoid embarrassing other teams once games are out of hand, which is an admirable trait but it also hurts the Cougars' "style points" in some cases.
Sure, the Cougs beat Portland State 69-0 last year, but in 2024 the margin was limited to 28 points against Southern Illinois. In 2023 BYU beat Utah Tech by 25. In 2022 the Cougs beat Utah Tech by 26. Back in 2021 Kalani Sitake's squad beat Idaho State by 45, but the following week struggled to a 17-point win at Georgia Southern.
In other words, Kalani Sitake likes to keep the margin of victory against completely overwhelmed opponents to somewhere near 28 points, which has been the recent trend with Saturday's opponent in Utah Tech.
Perhaps Kalani uses the "honk" approach with the Trailblazers because they are an in-state school and relationships matter to Sitake. He doesn't want to embarrass in-state coaching staffs. He doesn't want to rub Utah Tech players the wrong way, either, as talent can flow to Provo via the transfer portal from smaller in-state schools like Utah Tech, Southern Utah, and Weber State.
My prediction for Saturday is a very vanilla playbook from the starters, BYU has a big lead at halftime, then spends most of the second half pounding the run and letting the clock count to zero as quickly as possible.
BYU will get the win, but instead of delivering a kill shot like many BYU fans probably want, it's going to be more of a "honk" game.
Final score: BYU 38, Utah Tech 6
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