Amber Mathurin

A cow on his family's ranch did not survive calving season, so he took the calf and bottle fed it himself. He was also the starting quarterback of his high school football team at 14 years old. Byrd Ficklin is a quarterback at Utah now, and he grew up on a cattle ranch in Oktaha, Oklahoma, about 20 minutes outside Muskogee. His mother Brandy and his stepfather Mark run it. Cows, goats, chickens and donkeys. He has a horse out there named Clutch. His parents both went to Bacone College, a small school in Muskogee. His mother played soccer. His father Justin played football. Ficklin spent the first years of his life running around that campus. Then he got to Muskogee High and became the varsity starter as a freshman. Muskogee calls its teams the Roughers. That first team went 2 and 8. The next year they went 10 and 3. The year after that they went 12 and 2 and won the Oklahoma 6A-II state championship, which Muskogee had not won in more than 30 years. Here is what his former coach Travis Hill says about what that did to the town. He says Ficklin "brought the community all together." Now here is the part that does not make sense. Not one Power Four program offered him a scholarship. His family believes there were two reasons. He was in the wrong corner of Oklahoma, too far from where the big schools do their looking. And he throws left handed, which a lot of coaches quietly do not want. He could have transferred to a Texas school and fixed the exposure problem in one move. He stayed in Muskogee. Brent Venables and Oklahoma came around late. Then on November 20 of 2024, Kyle Whittingham called from Utah, and Ficklin committed. Then Whittingham left for Michigan and took the offensive coordinator with him. The new head coach, Morgan Scalley, called and made the case for staying. Ficklin stayed anyway. "Utah feels like home." Be straight about it. He is a backup. Devon Dampier is the starter in that Big 12 offense and Ficklin is in a gadget role, and Dampier is headed for the NFL, which means this probably is not Ficklin's team until 2027. Winning a state title in Oklahoma does not make anybody a college starter. Here is what his mother says about how they raised him. "We've always been really big on letting Byrd go and be a kid." And here is his father, on where he is right now. "I think he now knows he's ready, but he's still the next guy." On a ranch you feed the thing that cannot feed itself yet, and then you wait on it. Here is what Byrd Ficklin says about waiting. "I live every day like my time will come."