Kalani Sitake is being mistreated by BYU. That’s the polite way of saying it. A better way is he’s being jerked around by the school. There are more aggressive ways of saying it, but, lord, let us forbear.

Is there a silver lining in any of that? There might be, in the short term. Hold that thought.

First, there’s this: Sitake, normally a relatively gentle soul, at least on the sliding scale of head football coaches, is beyond angry.

He is properly steamed.

What fired him up is part of what you’ve already heard. The coach, on the edge of taking an offer from Penn State to coach that prestigious and accomplished football program for more money than he had ever imagined making, and taking more than a few of his assistants with him, pulled back to BYU because of the pledges and commitments made to him.

He would be treated like a top college head football coach. BYU football would be treated like a top-ranked program.

He would be paid substantially more. His team would have a better practice field, outside and in.

His players would have greater and more preferred access to the school’s indoor practice facility, which, in the past (and the present), they had (and still have) to share with other university functions, such as intramural games. Think about that for a minute. Would that ever happen at Alabama or Ohio State or Georgia or Oregon?

His players would have greater resources. BYU has a reputation for dumping millions and millions and millions more into NIL and other benefits, but that rep has been exaggerated in regard to football.

That’s just a fistful of the broken promises.

The more sources I’ve talked to — reliable sources at the school — the clearer and more certain the clownish runaround has become. The early speculation regarding the Sitake case based on reading between the lines of the coach’s comments has now been substantiated by people in the know.

What started as cryptic, regrettable suspicions has steamrolled into sad-and-sorry facts, stark demonstrations of the exact way not to run a stellar football program, especially a football program that otherwise might be on the verge of rocketing into competitive heights not seen by the Cougars in over 40 years.

Sitake was a huge part of that climb.

There’s no guarantee it will happen, and that’s the point. There are never any guarantees. But there are building blocks that, properly paid for and placed, can improve the likelihood of positive results.

If the powers that be at BYU just want a cute little football team that tries real hard and posts 6-6 or 7-5 records every year, that’s one thing. If BYU wants a full stadium, high television ratings and the acclaim, exposure and money generated by real success on the field, it has to give its experienced, venerable football coach what he knows he and the whole operation need to make that happen.

Some might think that request is excessive. But none of them would be found among the crowds who rush the field and dance in the streets when the Cougars win games and chase championships.

And if Sitake can’t do that at BYU, then no matter how much the coach loves the school, his alma mater, that school will lose him to another suitor. They almost lost him to Penn State, but the promises made to him, the promises that propel football excellence or at a minimum a shot at that excellence, have been not just dinged, but damaged. That’s what people who know are saying.

If Sitake walked out on BYU, now or later, that would be a disaster for the school, competitively and public relations-wise. BYU would be a laughingstock, the butt of jokes about a religious institution that says one thing and does another, that played an honorable man like Kalani Sitake for a fool, that baited him in and left him in the lurch, that squandered the services of a coach meant to coach at BYU, a coach who is straight out of Central Casting for that role.

Not good.

Over the long haul, such moves could leave BYU football broken. In the short run, until reparation and restitution are found and the wrongs are righted, this season, the one that starts in two weeks, might be saved under one condition.

The condition under which Sitake’s players rally around him.

That could actually work in the Cougars’ favor.

Football is such an emotional game. If Sitake dials in, even as the cold wind blows in his face, and his assistants focus, too, the players might find resolve in all the hubbub.

Most of them love their coach because they know he loves them back. That’s a powerful force that could overtake the locker room and overwhelm and overcome the institutional resistance seen now, if not as an evil empire, then as blatantly hypocritical.

It remains less than certain exactly who the emperor of that empire is. Sitake is mad, not just at athletic director Brian Santiago, but at top administrators at the school. Does it go past that, straight to church leadership?

God help BYU football if it does.

That, with exactness, is yet to be uncovered, but players are already rallying around their head coach. To what extent and to what end is yet to be determined.