A little after 2 p.m. MST on Tuesday, as BYU football players began to trickle into the Student Athlete Building to get dressed for their 3 p.m. practice at the Indoor Practice Facility on campus, word began to trickle out that head coach Kalani Sitake was spurning college football blue blood Penn State and staying in Provo.
The hurrahs and collective sighs of relief from BYU sports fans worldwide — expressed throughout social media and even to Sitake personally — gushed out like an Old Faithful eruption from all corners of the globe, a sign of just how beloved this 50-year-old man of Tongan descent is at this faith-based school.
A BYU student even made a sign begging Sitake to stay, and camped out at the coach’s parking spot on campus to make sure he saw it.
“If I am being honest, I just wanted to be here for a long, long time,” Sitake said at a hastily called news conference Tuesday night, even as high-profile BYU boosters such as Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth owner Ryan Smith and Crumbl Cookies CEO Jason McGowan looked on.
That BYU was willing, and able, to reportedly put together a deal to benefit him, his staff, players and the program is an unmistakable gesture that the school operated and supported by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is all-in on athletic success as a way to promote excellence in all facets of life.
“In many ways, Kalani Sitake is the public face of Brigham Young University,” said BYU president Shane Reese in a statement read by advancement vice president Keith Vorkink. “He leads our most prominent athletic team, and you couldn’t ask for a better exemplar of the values for which this university stands.”
So Sitake and the No. 11 BYU football team, a team that is 22-3 the past two seasons, and their fans can put the tension-filled 48 hours of internet- and phone-watching behind them and focus on another Herculean task: beating No. 4/5 Texas Tech (11-1) in Saturday’s Big 12 championship football game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Whether the massive distraction since news started leaking out Sunday morning — courtesy of coach’s and athletic directors’ agents, mostly — will have much of an effect on the 11-1 Cougars’ performance Saturday remains to be seen.
After Vorkink, Santiago and Sitake spoke at the press conference, players Chase Roberts and Tanner Wall sat at the same podium and said it won’t.
“I think it’s been huge to be able to obviously get rid of a distraction,” Roberts said. “But honestly, we’ve known Kalani and his love for us (for a long time), and whatever happened, we were going to go out and play for him. We were going to go out and win a game. We’ve put in too much this season to let anything take away from what we want to accomplish on Saturday.”
Monday, while mostly deflecting questions about his interest in the Penn State job, Sitake said having other schools show interest in any of the BYU coaches was actually a good thing because it means things are going well in Provo.
That’s debatable, although there’s no doubt that BYU athletics has a good thing going right now, from landing top recruit AJ Dybantsa and the No. 9 men’s basketball team’s early success, to the almost constant success the past few decades of BYU’s women’s sports, to football’s ascension under Sitake.
No doubt, BYU has found a way to promote mission over money, while still providing the substantial resources to attract top talent like head basketball coach Kevin Young and Dybantsa, Baylor transfer Rob Wright, and others to the Marriott Center, and it has now done the same for Sitake’s program.
“Playing for Kalani has changed the trajectory of our lives,” said Wall, who described the moment the team found out that Sitake was staying, as a lot of water splashing, hugging, crying and jubilation ensued. “That’s why he’s the perfect man for the job. … Any label you could find for our lives, Kalani has had a touch point on that.”
According to public records, Colorado’s Deion Sanders is the highest-paid coach in the Big 12, at $10.8 million per year. Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham ($7.5 million) and TCU’s Sonny Dykes ($7 million) are also near the top. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire signed a seven-year contract extension Tuesday that pays him roughly $7 million per year, plus incentives.
Sitake said BYU is not trying to duplicate what Tech is doing, although praising it. He said that “game plan” won’t work for BYU due to its uniqueness, honor code, and other aspects of the university. Holding back tears, Sitake became especially emotional when talking about his family, and his father, Tom, who was in the back of the room on the second floor of the SAB.
“There has never been a better match of coach and program than Kalani Sitake at BYU,” ESPN analyst and former Cougar Trevor Matich said Monday on BYUtv’s “Cougar Sports Nation.”
Is BYU out of the woods as far as coaching is concerned? Maybe not, especially if Kyle Whittingham decides to call it a career at Utah. Head coach-in-waiting Morgan Scalley will almost certainly make a run at BYU’s Jay Hill to replace himself as Utah’s defensive coordinator, won’t he?
But for now, Sitake, who was promoted to the strategic leadership role of Senior Associate Athletic Director last July by new AD Santiago, can put all his efforts into a successful postseason for the Cougars and perhaps afford to buy his wife, Timberly, whatever she wants for Christmas.
Should anyone be surprised that BYU was willing to step up to the plate financially, as hard as that is in a culture that appreciates frugality? That list of stunned participants in the coaching carousel should also include Penn State, which learned along with the rest of the nation just how much BYU is valued by coaches, supporters and those who run the institution itself.
I’ve held on to the following statement by Santiago since I spoke with him at the Big 12 basketball media days event in Kansas City, and it seems like it really applies now:
“One thing that I feel confident about is that at BYU we’re all the way in for our coaches and programs. We’re invested, but we’re going to do it the BYU way. I feel like we’re 100% in the game. You’ve heard me say before that we need to be in the game. We’re never going to lead out with some of those things, but we’re 100% in the game, and I know that our coaches feel like we’re totally invested in greatness,” Santiago said in October.
“If we’re going to chase greatness, if we’re going to chase championships, if we’re going to chase climbing to the top of the mountain, we have to be invested,” he continued. “And that’s what gets me excited, is that Cougar Nation is 100% invested in us, and totally aligned with the university and the church that sponsors us. We are not going to shy away from our mission. We are in the game. We are going to continue to be in the game, and we’re going to invest at a level that’s going to give our coaches and student-athletes a chance to compete at the very highest level.”
That continued on Tuesday afternoon, four days before that longed-for national spotlight will shine brightly upon them.
