Will BYU football’s unique culture hinder or help in brave new world of college sports?

Brigham Young University has always been something of a curiosity in college football.

Outside observers look at the faith-based school and see it conducting a grand experiment.

The school supported by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always aspired to be nationally relevant, a big-time player in the college sports landscape, all while adhering to a strict honor code for its students, coaches and faculty. That uniqueness, fueled by a long-held culture of faith and family, sets BYU’s teams apart from almost every other athletic program in the country.

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“I have always found BYU to be an absolutely fascinating case study in college sports, particularly football,” said Berry Tramel, college sports columnist for the Tulsa World and a 46-year journalism veteran. “They have a worldwide brand, a worldwide reach, yet they seem to strive to be ‘not of the world,’ in a religious sense.”

Therein lies the rub, the grand experiment, as it were.

Can an athletic program comprised mostly of clean-living, God-fearing, scripture-reading, love-thy-neighbor, Jesus Christ-following individuals thrive in the increasingly secular, cutthroat and money-oriented landscape of college sports?

Nearly half of the players on BYU’s current football roster — 56 — have served missions in 22 different countries and speak 10 different languages. Six coaches on the staff, including head coach Kalani Sitake, have served missions.

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Sitake, his assistant coaches, new BYU athletic director Brian Santiago, former and current BYU football players and even national sports reporters such as the aforementioned Tramel believe it can be done.

Sitake’s “love and learn” culture can survive revenue sharing, NIL, the transfer portal and everything else associated with this brave new world of college football, they say, while acknowledging that there will continue to be plenty of challenges along the way.

Already, BYU football in 2025 has experienced some of those difficulties.

As Sitake, Santiago and company try to thread this needle, as momentum seems to be surging for football on the field and basketball on the court, and both in recruiting, for fundraising and for ticket sales, the school lost the university’s most recognizable athlete, its fringe Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback.

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Now, the Cougars might have to move through this third year in the Big 12 and first year of revenue sharing with a freshman manning the biggest role at the QB Factory.

Punching above its weight class

BYU’s athletic programs have been successful on a national level during the past 50 years, evidenced by an average rank of 31.3 in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings. BYU has been in the top 25 nine times since the award’s inception in 1993-94, was 12th in 1998-99, and 25th in the most recent 2024-25 standings.

In roughly the last half-century, it has gone from an obscure school in the Mountain Time Zone to a legitimate college sports power — not a blue blood, by any stretch, but a solid, recognizable, international brand.

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A well-rounded athletic program has been the key. Football is still king, but has not been the most successful sport on campus since its national championship in 1984. BYU basketball has been mostly good, but not great, other than Sweet 16 runs in 2011 and last season. The school’s top sports have been cross-country and volleyball, often contested far from the spotlight and attention that BYU fans crave.

Of course, coach Sitake’s football program has been steadily climbing, and is coming off one of the better seasons in school history — an 11-2 record, a four-way tie for first place in the Big 12 regular-season standings, and a resounding 36-14 victory over Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes in the Alamo Bowl last December.

“I have always found BYU to be an absolutely fascinating case study in college sports, particularly football. They have a worldwide brand, a worldwide reach, yet they seem to strive to be ‘not of the world,’ in a religious sense.”

Berry Tramel, college sports columnist for the Tulsa World

In football and almost everything else, BYU has punched above its weight class, all while not belonging to a so-called power conference until 2023. All told, the school has managed to mesh athletics and its mission with positive, successful results.

As any legitimate follower of college sports knows, times have drastically changed, and continue to change, in college football and college sports in general. These are not your grandfather’s games.

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The latest upheaval is revenue sharing, as schools are allowed to directly share one-fifth of their revenue with student-athletes due to the recent House Settlement approved by a federal judge in San Francisco. Chances are, your favorite male or female college sports star is now being paid, including those at BYU.

All athletes will benefit, but the lion’s share of those proceeds will go to football players.

Revenue sharing — athletes began receiving checks on July 1 — is just the latest game-changer in college sports. It joins additional conference realignment and restructuring, increased scholarship benefits, reduced restrictions on transferring, the advent of the transfer portal, and payments for the use of athletes’ name, image and likeness (NIL) as notable seismic changes the past decade.

Last month, the Deseret News examined how BYU stands to “benefit from the upheaval in the business of college sports,” reporting that its athletic department budget has doubled in less than a decade and university leaders believe they are prepared for the future from a financial perspective.

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This article delves into a less quantifiable aspect of the changes and explores whether BYU can continue to have athletic success while maintaining its identity and culture of faith and family, or what Santiago likes to call “the BYU way.”

Among the developments worth exploring:

• BYU’s insistence on adherence to its honor code has resulted in some notable recent headlines, most notably Russian basketball star Egor Demin’s rapid ascendence and his crediting his time at BYU as transformative off the court as well as on. Conversely, quarterback Jake Retzlaff’s missteps led to his departure in July, but upon arriving at Tulane the QB credited BYU’s culture for helping him explore his own Jewish faith at a deeper level.

• How Santiago and 10th-year head football coach Sitake plan to forge ahead with a blueprint laid out by their mentors and predecessors, Tom Holmoe and LaVell Edwards.

• Longtime national college sports observers, and a local one who played for BYU, weigh in; their answers may surprise you.

• How the signing of the No. 1 prep basketball recruit in the country, AJ Dybantsa, who is not a Latter-day Saint, shows that BYU is prepared, and equipped, to battle with the blue bloods for the best of the best. BYU has also landed one of the top quarterbacks in the 2026 signing class, California five-star prospect Ryder Lyons, and the best female long-distance runner in the country, Timpview High’s Jane Hedengren. Last year, BYU signed the top male long-distance runner in the nation, Danny Simmons, who is currently serving a mission in Atlanta.

Understanding the BYU way

Is it doable?

Already this summer, that resolve to adhere to its core beliefs has been tested, as BYU’s most recognizable player, Retzlaff — the first Jewish quarterback in school history — faced a seven-game suspension for violating the honor code and elected to leave BYU and walk on at Tulane. The development has left the program working to find an adequate replacement at the most important position on the field.

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BYU landed at No. 23 in the coaches poll released last week, but in other polls and projections, expectations for the Cougars in 2025 have tumbled since Retzlaff’s departure.

But Retzlaff said he thrived in BYU’s culture of faith, and there are other success stories.

Most recently, the teenager Demin, who is not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was selected eighth overall by the Brooklyn Nets in June’s NBA draft. In his farewell news conference, Demin described his year at BYU as “life-changing” and referred to his time in Provo as “profoundly important” to his spiritual and personal development. He said he was leaving BYU, but BYU will never leave him.

What key stakeholders are saying

Perhaps nobody at BYU has latched onto that culture and identity and pushed it out to the public more than head football coach Sitake, whose “love and learn” mantra for his program is repeated time and again in Provo. Even BYU President Shane Reese has adopted it, with Reese and Santiago saying recently that Sitake is the ideal man to be running the school’s marquee sports program.

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“We are led by a great football coach in Kalani Sitake,” Santiago told the Deseret News in July. “I think he is a great man, and has built a culture of excellence in a way where it is really about the big picture, and especially tied into the mission of BYU.”

Sitake enters his 10th season with a 72-43 record at BYU, including 5-2 in bowl games. Thirteen of his players have been drafted into the NFL. Last December, he signed a “long-term” contract extension.

“I am confident we can keep doing it,” he told the Deseret News last week. “These people around me, these coaches, this support staff, and the players have all bought into the lessons and things that we are trying to teach. It’s not perfect, but these guys are trying hard to be what we want to be. And I like that. I don’t mind the expectations from people. I believe we will rise to them.”

Sitake said he “cringes” a bit when people talk about it being his culture. He said it was first established by the late and legendary Edwards, his coach in the 1990s, and has been successfully implemented at other places by other Edwards’ disciples such as Texas’ Steve Sarkisian and Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs.

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“LaVell stressed that if the focus is on the right things, you will be OK,” Sitake said. “With NIL, if you remember correctly, we moved slowly. We didn’t just go crazy, like a lot of other places, because we didn’t have the ability to do that. We wanted to make sure that we did things the right way and were able to avoid entitlement. … When your focus is on the right things, and you don’t focus on money, you are better off.

“LaVell was never about money. He focused on the opportunities and on connection. It is about a lot of the gospel principles that we have in the church. I think they can be applied here,” Sitake continued. “That says a lot about our upper campus administration, our president, vice president (Keith Vorkink), our athletic director. That makes my job a lot easier.”

Finding the right fits for the culture

Sitake said the culture will remain intact because coaches will stress the importance of getting the right fits at BYU, whether recruits are members of the church or not. He noted that even though Retzlaff’s tenure did not end as most would have liked, the quarterback did say when he arrived at Tulane that his time at BYU was transformational and strengthened his own religious beliefs.

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Sitake acknowledges that recruiting strong athletes will always be vital to BYU’s future success, but not at the expense of challenging its culture.

“We’ve learned that just because recruits are members of the church, you can’t assume that they’re a great fit,” Sitake said. “Do they fit your locker room? Are they excited about the opportunity? There are a lot of people that want to be here for the right reasons, and we gotta go find them, whether they’re members of the church or not, or whether they have a connection to our legacy or not.”

As examples, Sitake mentioned star running back LJ Martin and quarterback Treyson Bourguet, the latter of which was battling McCae Hillstead and Bear Bachmeier to replace Retzlaff in the starting lineup but appears to have been relegated to a backup role. Neither Martin nor Bourguet are Latter-day Saints.

“LJ didn’t have a connection here, but he studied it and felt like this was a perfect place for him,” Sitake said. “Same with Treyson and others that are here. All these guys, they came here for the right reasons, and none of those involved money.”

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Sitake said he learned from Edwards that the players have to come first, and their well-being should be top of mind in building the right culture. Long before the transfer portal and freedom of transferring without having to sit out a year was a thing, Sitake says he always released players to other schools, no questions asked.

“So the transfer portal now is about trying to keep people away from persuading your guys to leave,” he said. “The goal is to keep everybody humble and communicating. I think that’s the key (to retaining players) and strengthening your culture.”

Roderick: Retaining players is part of the battle

Perhaps no coach on campus is more challenged by the Retzlaff departure than offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick, a former Cougar who spent 11 years coaching at the University of Utah and now must find a replacement to keep the momentum, and culture of winning, from grinding to a halt.

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Roderick said a good way to gauge whether a culture has staying power is if the program is able to retain players in this day and age of so many outside enticements.

“I think we are made for these changes in college sports,” Roderick said. “This past season, at least on offense, we lost one player to the portal that we really didn’t want to lose. We lost Keelan (Marion), who went to Miami. We loved Keelan. He is a good player. But we lost fewer players than most programs did, and I think a big part of that is, No. 1, we have a lot of players that really want to be here for other reasons besides football. And then Kalani has a great team culture, and guys like playing here.”

On defense, BYU lost part-time starters Crew Wakley to Purdue and Harrison Taggart to Cal, but those departures were more about playing time than the players chasing bigger paydays elsewhere, according to several BYU assistant coaches.

“Our ability to retain players is going to be better than a lot of programs. This is a great place to play, as has been shown,” Roderick said. “And then NIL-wise, we have a lot of people who want to be involved with our program, and have legitimate NIL deals for our guys. Our university has been great about our revenue-sharing operation. So I think yes, we can be very successful in this new era. It actually levels the playing field for us.”

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Reese, Santiago and Sitake have made the same observations — that BYU’s uniqueness can be turned into a strength, and not a hindrance.

‘This is just who we are’

Last October, church education commissioner Elder Clark Gilbert told the ”Y’s Guys” podcast that BYU athletics has a mandate to be elite and nationally relevant, but maintain what makes the school unique.

“But if it ever came down to the only way to stay in this (was) to walk away from our values, that would be the end of athletics at BYU,” Gilbert told Dave McCann and Blaine Fowler. “This is not going to happen because we are committed to it from the board (of trustees), to the commissioner, to the president, to the athletic director, to the coaches. We have a culture here that is exceptional and I am confident it won’t (change). There is no other place like this.”

Santiago was Holmoe’s deputy athletic director at the time, but is now sitting in the hot seat. He knows the directive and is eager to carry it out, he said last month at the Big 12 football media days in Frisco, Texas.

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“Not only is it doable, it is the way we are going to do it. We are aligned, not only with the leadership of the university and President Reese, but all the way up the ladder to (Elder Gilbert) and the board of trustees,” Santiago said. “We feel passionate that we can win at the highest level, do it within all of the rules and regulations, and bring a lot of enthusiasm and excitement to Cougar Nation.”

Already, Santiago has made some notable enhancements to the athletic department’s senior leadership team, hiring former BYU basketball star and NBA player Travis Hansen as senior associate athletic director and promoting several coaches to larger roles within the department.

Santiago said that aside from revenue sharing, most of the changes have been around for several years, and BYU has flourished with them.

“I think last year was a good example of that. Nobody expecting anything out of Kalani and our football team. … I think he has built some incredible depth in the recruiting, and that is what it takes in these power conferences. And then we saw it in basketball as well. I just think people are going to continue to see BYU on the rise.”

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Santiago said an emphasis on preparedness, ingrained into the culture, will carry the day for the Cougars. Like many other BYU coaches and administrators over the years, Santiago said the honor code is a “strength” that the institution will continue to lean into.

“I actually think it is a competitive advantage for us, who we are, what we represent, and the way we do things,” Santiago said. “The right coaches are in place that are going to be able to chase greatness, chase national relevance and do it the BYU way.

“That is just who we are. We have 100 years of history to prove that we can represent everything about this university, and win at the highest level. Everybody is seeing that not only are we going to win big, but we are going to do it in a way that is going to make Cougar Nation proud.”

‘We have been preparing for this’

As reported by the Deseret News last month, school officials have been meeting about, discussing and planning for the House Settlement to be approved for years, Santiago said.

“With revenue sharing and NIL, we actually feel like we are in a position of strength, because we have been preparing for this. We got a great administration at BYU. We have been down the road for a year or two with this, planning and making sure financially we are in a solid position,” Santiago said. “Because of that, and because of the buy-in from our coaches, we are going to be fine.

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“We are super excited about the future of revenue share, shifting the power back to the university, allowing us to do this the right way, within the parameters. … We think we are perfectly positioned to be nationally relevant and excellent across the board in every one of our sports, and we are going to emphasize that it all starts with football, but the rest of our sports are super important to us.”

Of course, there have been growing pains. For instance, demand for football and basketball tickets, which is part of the brave new world of college athletics, spurred by membership in the Big 12 in which every game has meaning and significance, is at an all-time high, the Deseret News reported this week.

What others are saying

Back when BYU was being considered for the Big 12, Tramel says he made a trip to Provo to see what the school was all about.

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“I have actually been up there a few times. I know more about BYU than most outsiders,” Tramel told the Deseret News. “I actually think BYU is well-positioned to thrive, more than most, because I have seen what they are about.

“BYU has got money,” Tramel continued. “So, money is not a problem. The NIL situation, I am not saying that every (Latter-day Saint) on planet Earth is going to give them money. But, a lot of people will be interested in participating in BYU’s NIL stuff. So I think that gives them an advantage over most.”

An example of how BYU fans are invested in the program, with their hearts and pocketbooks, came in November 2020 when Holmoe asked for $20 million to help with the shortfall caused by COVID-19 eliminating most ticket sales and sponsorships. In five months, BYU fans donated $15.25 million.

Tramel said BYU — and Utah, for that matter — is in a fast-growing market, which should also help.

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“BYU has always been a major program, in my eyes,” he said. “They just haven’t been in a major conference. Now they are, and I think they are well-positioned to succeed. I don’t think that means they can become Georgia or Alabama, but I think they can do well.”

Brett McMurphy, a college football insider at On3.com, remembers visiting BYU’s football media day when the school was an independent and taking in all the facilities and atmosphere in Provo and wondering aloud what would happen if the Cougars were ever in a Power Five league.

Now he knows.

“Despite the honor code, I still think BYU can succeed,” McMurphy said. “Were they not in a power conference, I would say, ‘No, they can’t thrive.’ Now that they are in the Big 12, absolutely they can do it. I think there are enough players out there that fit their profile, if you will. They will make it work.”

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While acknowledging that he doesn’t follow BYU as closely as others at the national level, McMurphy said it appears from the outside that BYU is willing to be solidly in the game when it comes to NIL, revenue sharing and scholarship enhancements.

“I think the perception is that BYU is a real player in all this, especially with the AJ Dybantsa (signing),” McMurphy said. “It is almost like Texas Tech football, where suddenly you are realizing, ‘Wow, these guys are really into it. They are serious about this. They are going to make a big impact.’”

Signing of AJ Dybantsa

Bruce Feldman, a reporter for The Athletic and Fox Sports, said that BYU is a “national brand” that has been elevated by its membership in the Big 12 and by Sitake’s success since taking over for Bronco Mendenhall. He believes basketball’s signing of Dybantsa sent a message that BYU is all-in in the NIL and revenue sharing era.

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“When you get somebody like that, it only helps the national perception of BYU,” Feldman said. “I don’t cover college basketball, but I know who AJ Dybantsa is. That’s huge for BYU.”

Feldman believes in the long run the Retzlaff situation will be “more positive than negative” for BYU, and further solidify the school’s brand.

“We talked to Kalani about the honor code and he was like, ‘Well, that’s what comes with BYU,’” Feldman said. “BYU is going to be very selective in a lot of things, whether it is academics or whatever. I think it helps them. Football is something that is really important there. Kalani leans into that the right way. He is authentic and people know that and they also know that BYU is not for everybody.”

Former BYU defensive back Ben Criddle, now a sports talk radio host on ESPN 960, says BYU can still retain its uniqueness and culture and thrive in the college sports world if it keeps the focus on being transformational instead of transactional.

“I do believe that BYU, with its leadership, and Kalani at the helm with his love-and-learn culture, faith-first and discipleship culture (is set up for continued success),” Criddle said. “We heard Kalani speak at his devotional recently. That embodies what Kalani and the administration want the culture to be within BYU football.”

Having played at two junior colleges, in addition to BYU, and having “interacted with many football players at other schools,” Criddle said BYU’s unique culture is most often evident in the locker room, among its players.

“They are high-level kids that come from high-level families that want to be well-rounded, that want a high academic experience,” he said. “They want jobs that will ultimately take care of their families. They want their morals, ethics and spirituality aligned with the infrastructure that BYU provides, and then they want to be able to compete at the highest levels of athletics.

“They can accomplish that. They will accomplish that as long as they understand what the why of it all is, which is the transformation of individual progression and hopefully aligning with being the best human you can be, and aligning with Christ,” Criddle continued.

The transformations BYU seeks is embodied by this statement from linebacker Jack Kelly, who is not a Latter-day Saint:

“Having this mission that BYU has allows people to be better people. Because if you are following someone like Christ, you are going to have a bigger motivation than yourself to do important things in life,” Kelly said. “If you are just about yourself, you are never going to accomplish anything. Once you put your life in someone else’s hands and you work for something that is bigger than yourself, I feel like you can accomplish anything in the world that you want to.”