Connor Pay and Chase Roberts have been two important members of the BYU football team’s offense this fall as the Cougars have roared to a 7-0 start and the No. 11 ranking in the latest AP Top 25 poll.
At the same time, Pay and Roberts have been working together on a project they hope will show important parts of their lives away from the field.
On Monday, BYUtv officially launched a new podcast hosted by Pay and Roberts called “Two Point Conversion.” It’s a weekly show in which the duo — along with other special guests — will be discussing that week’s lesson from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ “Come, Follow Me” manual, along with other faith-promoting topics.
Three full-length episodes (40, 42 and 51 minutes, respectively) have already been released. The first one is Pay and Roberts alone, the second also features Cougar safety Tanner Wall and the third also features Mark Ogletree, an associate professor in the department of Church History and Doctrine at BYU.
The episode titles match the corresponding “Come, Follow Me” lessons. As such, the first three episodes are titled “Behold, My Joy Is Full,” “Ye Are the Children of the Covenant” and “There Could Not Be a Happier People,” like the three most recent “Come, Follow Me” lessons.
In an introduction to the podcast in the first episode, Pay and Roberts — who served church missions in the Washington, D.C., area and Canada, respectively, after standout high school football careers not far from the BYU campus — recounted how they began discussing the idea for the show a couple of months ago.
Then at Big 12 media days in Las Vegas in July, they shared the idea with Keith Vorkink, who works as advancement vice president at BYU with emphasis in the athletic department and BYU Broadcasting, among other areas.
Vorkink connected Pay and Roberts with “big wigs” at BYU Broadcasting, and the idea has turned into a reality.
“One of the reasons why we wanted to do it was that obviously people get to see us perform on the field and they get to see a lot of our school and football side of our lives, but not a ton into the spiritual side of our lives, which is obviously a major part if not the biggest part,” Pay said.
Added Roberts: “Very fortunate for us. We get opportunities in interviews sometimes to share about our love for Christ, but now we get to really dive in and show who we are as BYU football players, that we rely on Christ in our everyday efforts — during practices, during games, and this is gonna be awesome, to be able to share and hopefully bring Christ more into our lives.
“You can’t talk enough about our Savior Jesus Christ, so what a cool opportunity to do this.”
Pay added that while the focus will be on “Come, Follow Me” material, he and Roberts envision bringing a variety of guests from the BYU campus community on to the show, even ones who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I think it’s gonna be really fun to get to hear different people’s perspectives along with ours,” Pay said.