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BYU’s board of trustees believes the university’s sports programs must lean into the uniqueness of the school’s educational and spiritual mission to succeed, school President Shane Reese recently told the Deseret News.
“We want to be really competitive on the field, the court and the pitch, but also grounded in who we are as a university,” Reese said in our story this week about the finances of BYU sports in a revolutionary era in the business of college athletics.
“Candidly, if we’re not going to be different than other institutions, we’re not going to be successful,” he added. “Differentiators are what make people successful from a business perspective, and our differentiator is that we’re grounded in our spiritual mission and that we are going to try to do things differently.”
Not everything Reese said in the interview made it into this week’s story, due to the size and focus of the article. Here’s what else the university president said about sports and the board of trustees, which is comprised of leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re locked in on what makes us unique and be different,” he said. “Every time I’ve visited with (the board) about athletics, they seem to resonate with the idea that we have to do things differently.”
An example would be BYU football coach Kalani Sitake’s focus on love and learning, which last year led players to reach out to support BYU-Pathway Worldwide students in Africa.
Reese and other presidents of the schools in the Church Educational System meet monthly with the board, led by the First Presidency and chaired by President Russell M. Nelson.
He said the focus of those meetings is on educational programs. Sports is not discussed every month, but when it is, there is a focus on mission.
“Our board of trustees loves what the athletic department does to develop young people,” Reese said. “Our board of trustees loves what it does to be an amplifier of gospel principles in action.”
BYU annually builds a new marketing campaign with videos that play during commercial timeouts of national broadcasts of football and basketball games. The videos regularly portray how the school’s education programs meet gospel aims like serving others.
“I think that there’s great appreciation that the athletic department provides a significant amount of attention for the university,” Reese said of the board.
The board also tracks and provides guidance on finances.
“In college athletics, university presidents and boards of trustees around the country are all worried about what happens when money becomes the primary driver for all that happens,” Reese said. “If we’re not focused on the development of student-athletes and them obtaining an education, and it’s just a financial pursuit, things will quickly get out of our control and we’ll lose sight of what college athletics really were first set up to be, which is really to help and further the educational mission.
“That’s sentiment that we hear as well (with our board), concern about the role of money and how that impacts things, but also that we become a light, that we are committed to a unique approach to college athletics, both in terms of development of the athletes and in our approach to the new world of financially driven athletics. We’ve got to still be unique and have a strategy that reflects our uniqueness.”
My recent stories
- How BYU benefits from the upheaval in the business of college sports: A comprehensive guide (July 16)
About the church
- The church is seeing record global membership growth.
- President Dallin H. Oaks traveled to Belgium. See what he said about following Jesus Christ.
- Elder Ronald A. Rasband visited Historic Nauvoo and spoke to the casts of the Nauvoo and British pageants. He told them to "add to your talents."
- The First Presidency announced the open house for the Farmington New Mexico Temple.
- The Tabernacle Choir performed for the 5,000 consecutive week. Go inside the landmark broadcast of "Music & the Spoken Word." Read more here about what shaped the 5,000th episode.
What I’m reading
I’ve talked with religion data specialist Ryan Burge, most recently at a conference in Washington, D.C. He wrote a strong piece for the Deseret News about his experience as a pastor: “The church I led closed a year ago. I’m still not over it.”
Behind the scenes
