The start of football season may be less than a month away, but many of BYU’s recent headlines have come from within the athletic department rather than on the practice field.
Social media talk swirled during the past week regarding BYU athletic director Brian Santiago’s job status and his relationship with head football coach Kalani Sitake. A BYU spokesperson even addressed the speculation on Cougarboard, a BYU fan website.
On Wednesday at BYU’s team photo day, Sitake met with reporters and offered his first official comments on the matter.
“How’s my relationship with everybody? I’m easy to get along with, as long as you just take care of our football team and take care of the boys,” Sitake said, in response to a question from the Deseret News’ Jay Drew about his relationship with Santiago.
“The focus has got to be on the players, so the focus shouldn’t be on my relationship with anybody, other than my relationship with these players and being their leader. The great thing is we have amazing leadership on the team, so I don’t have to do much, they make my job a lot easier. I’ve just got to make sure we can avoid all the distractions, so that’s my job, I’m trying to make sure these guys get all the attention, because the attention needs to be on them going into the season.
Sitake continued, “I’ve made comments and talked about things in the past, but once the season starts, I’m all about the boys and what the fans expect. So we’re trying to meet all of our fans’ expectations, and that’s what I’m working on right now.”
At BYU’s annual media golf event in July, Sitake told ESPN the Fan’s “Cougar Sports with Ben Criddle” radio show that he and his staff have been “given the challenge of doing the most with the least” in regards to the football program’s resources. The interview has since gained hundreds of thousands of views on social media, having also been shared or referenced by various national outlets.
Sitake was asked Thursday to share his opinion on where BYU’s football resources currently stand.
“My agent’s gonna handle all that stuff, so I’m gonna focus on this year’s team,” Sitake said.
“As long as I’m the head coach here at BYU, I’m gonna always fight like crazy to get this place so it can be a premier program. I feel like the players deserve that, the coaches and staff deserve it, and most all of Cougar Nation deserves it. So that’s what I’m going to try to do.”
Sitake also spoke on BYU’s recent hiring of Kentucky’s Marc Hill for a deputy athletic director role, saying he doesn’t “know him personally” yet and isn’t aware of what his responsibilities will entail, but that he has a “great reputation.”
“He’s been in the business for a long time,” Sitake said of Hill. “He brings some experience and a wealth of knowledge from the SEC, so we’ll take all the help we can get in our department.”
