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A season ago, Kalani Sitake and BYU were on the precipice of making the College Football Playoff. The Cougars made it to the Big 12 Championship, where they fell to Texas Tech to just miss out on the 12-team bracket.
After an offseason that saw Penn State notably pursue Sitake for its head coach vacancy, the Cougars are now looking to keep the momentum with their headman returning to Provo. But as he looked ahead during a recent interview, he gave a lengthy response about the resources at the program’s disposal.
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In the NIL era, Kalani Sitake made clear he’s not striving to be the team offering athletes the most money. However, he said the ability to be in that position could help keep BYU toward the top of the Big 12 and also play a role in a national title push. Given the program’s momentum, he called for more investment in the football program.
“I said before, I don’t want to be the highest bidder,” Sitake told CougarSports’ Ben Criddle July 30. “But I’d like to have access to stuff like that, and that’s a reminder to the administration of that you can count on us to do things right and be responsible with the finances to get the right program in place. Sometimes, you kind of go through these things. You’re like, ‘Okay, this is going well.’ And I’ve always just been appreciative of everything. But then, when I look back at it and my agent tells me, ‘Hey, this is the stuff that everybody else has.’ … It just gives me a whole different appreciation for them.
“I’m not trying to like get sympathy from everyone. I’m just trying to tell you guys how real it is. And the fact that we’re this close to making the playoffs, it’s like, come on. Let’s not make the same mistakes that we’ve made in the past overall. Let’s keep investing in BYU football. And it doesn’t take much. It doesn’t have to be in the form of just one thing, which is what everybody thinks: paying players. It’s just a lot of different factors that go into it.”
As he heard from other programs interested in hiring him, Sitake said he learned more about how they’re navigating the new-look landscape. He added his asks at BYU aren’t too extreme. He just wants to see the school take another step.
“That’s kind of where I’m at,” Sitake said. “And I know it’s real because Penn State, the other schools that were talking to me, they kind of revealed it for me. And I’m not even asking for that stuff. It’s very simple stuff that’s very attainable.”
Kalani Sitake: BYU has ‘challenge of doing most with least’
Kalani Sitake also said BYU’s culture has been a driving force in the program’s success under his watch. He has a career 84-45 since taking over at his alma mater in 2016 and won Big 12 Coach of the Year last year. But in the ever-changing world of college football, he stressed the need to keep pace with other programs, particularly BYU’s conference counterparts.
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“We’ve been given the challenge of doing the most with the least,” Sitake said. “So you lean heavily on culture to help you win. But I think there’s a way that you can actually increase your chances on both. I think there’s a way that you can get in deep culture and be really strong as a football team. There’s an opportunity that you can get to players that you normally wouldn’t have access to, so we’re trying to develop them. Sometimes, it happens in development with the right resources that you have … and then, all the resources that we would have available to them. That’s key. So it’s a bunch of factors that go into it.
“But I still want more more resources for these guys. And for me the frustrating part is like, yeah, we’ve been able to do so much and everyone’s like, ‘Okay, keep doing it.’ But we can do way more at a faster rate. When I sit in a certain situation and I actually see that, yeah, I’m not going to be the one that’s making high demands. This is very simple demands of people that our opponents have in the conference – and not even Texas Tech. The others, right? So if we can get an even playing field with that stuff, then I should be able to do more. Whether that means more NIL, rev-share, stuff like that – that’s one thing.”
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