This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Provo
The moment Kalani Sitake knew his job description had changed came in late January when he visited Jackson Kaufusi and became convinced that he should offer a scholarship to the Brighton High School linebacker.
Sitake's instinct was to check with his boss, standard practice in his previous 13 years of recruiting for Southern Utah, Utah and Oregon State. Then it struck him.
"I didn't have to call anybody to get permission," Sitake said Wednesday, discussing his first group of signees as BYU's head football coach. "It was just weird to me."
So he went ahead with the offer. Kaufusi accepted, becoming part of Sitake's 25-player class. Competing with Utah and other Pac-12 schools, Sitake is not going to get every LDS player or every Polynesian athlete or every Utahn. Yet he's establishing that he'll be aggressive, as he showed by pursuing five-star linebacker Mique Juarez — who signed with UCLA, meaning he'll play Sept. 17 at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Sitake's first home game.
BYU's biggest breakthrough was keeping Snow College receiver Jonah Trinnaman, which required some "re-recruiting," by offensive coordinator Ty Detmer's account.
The staff's adventures included the time Sitake and Detmer missed their original flight to Hawaii. They spent an unscheduled night in Los Angeles, arrived in Honolulu in the early afternoon, visited two families and caught a flight home that evening.
And then Sitake and Detmer couldn't even get through the staff's first signing-day news conference without a glitch. Detmer started detailing the attributes of a walk-on quarterback from Idaho, only to have Sitake whisper in his ear and then stop him, because the player is technically a recruitable athlete and NCAA rules forbid public endorsements.
"No more questions for Ty," Sitake said good-naturedly.
Detmer is known to tease his co-workers, so defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki and assistant head coach Ed Lamb were happy to have some material to use against him.
So ended the six-week sprint for the staff that followed Sitake's Dec. 21 introduction. The effort involved keeping many committed players from the Bronco Mendenhall era, withdrawing some previous offers and competing for some players who were ticketed to other schools. BYU's four offensive line recruits, for instance, all were identified late in the process.
"All that stuff was difficult," Sitake said, "but we enjoyed every second of it."
Not since Gary Crowton in 2001 had BYU's head coach represented the school for the first time in recruiting. Mendenhall was an assistant for two years before taking over, but this was new to Sitake. Yet as a former Cougar player, he knew what he was getting into with BYU's recruiting culture, and the experience was "just natural for me," he said.
Sitake is already looking forward to launching into a full recruiting cycle, having more time to develop relationships. That's his game, and he'll always make a good impression.
"He's just very genuine," Detmer said. "He really does get personal with people."
In his eight years as Southern Utah's head coach, Lamb tried to present himself as professionally as possible in recruiting, aware of misconceptions about the quality of his FCS program. Lamb discovered that Sitake went about things differently — which is not to say he's unprofessional.
"He's just so relaxed with families and players, about the antithesis of the way I operated," Lamb said. "With BYU, there is already a professional environment and it's already a big deal to the recruits. Kalani understands that, and he operates in a really relaxed manner that puts them at ease. That's his strength in recruiting."
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