BYU has restructured its athletic department, with Kalani Sitake overseeing football, reporting directly to a new boss, a school vice president, and athletic director Brian Santiago handling 20 other sports and reporting to the same boss.

What exactly does that and the timing of it mean?

The statement given to The Salt Lake Tribune reads like this:

“Today’s organizational adjustments reflect BYU’s commitment to invest in our student-athletes and strengthen our world-class programs. Brian Santiago remains BYU’s athletic director. We will continue adapting to the changing landscape of college athletics in a way that aligns with the university’s mission.”

A couple of things there.

The first sentence is what Sitake has wanted all along for his football team, what he was promised when he decided to remain at BYU even as Penn State was wagging under his nose both the opportunity to win at one of college football’s premier programs, with all the resources needed for that, and a whole bunch of money. Plus, he had seen the entitlements that were given to BYU basketball, a sport about which Santiago, and some Cougar boosters, had always been enthusiastic.

The second sentence is a bit of a problem. Sitake and Santiago have been at odds — one source said the AD and the coach do not have much affinity for one another — and that’s putting it mildly. At one point, Sitake wanted Santiago gone. And even with this new department restructuring, with Sitake and Santiago working under and answering to the same BYU vice president, Keith Vorkink, though separate from each other, Santiago is still in place, albeit in a weakened capacity.

Publicly, Sitake has said, when asked about it, his relationship with Santiago is … well, he said it like this: “How’s my relationship with everybody? I’m easy to get along with — as long as you take care of our football team.” Which is a little like asking a hound dog if he likes cats, and having the dog bark back, “I like ‘em fine, as long as they act like dogs.”

Whether their “relationship” festers on divided tracks is yet to be seen. Continuing the animal theme here: Will it be like birds in a nest, their mouths open, waiting to see how momma bird allocates worms into their respective beaks, measuring and comparing those doses at each feeding time? At some juncture, will one bird boot the other bird out of the nest, out of the tree, onto the ground?

What is this, an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?

BYU sports has been a wild kingdom for some time now.

The third sentence, Sitake has no issues with. BYU can change and adapt to the max, including scratching up the money and resources necessary to conquer that landscape. That’s, in fact, what the head football coach wants. As for that last part, he’s acted in his capacity atop BYU football in a way that aligns almost perfectly with that university mission. There have been some bumps and bruises to that end, but listen to Sitake talk about family, faith and football and walk away convinced that not only does he buy into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he wants it to thrive. If winning football can help, he’s all for it.

There’s no doubt that Sitake, for more than a while, has been less than satisfied with the manner in which he and his football team were being overseen. This new arrangement appears — the operative word there being “appears” — to be better situated for him to get not just what he wants, but what he was promised before he turned down the Nittany Lions.

Whether this new setup will provide the man everything he expected to receive — resources for better, prioritized practice facilities and recruiting processes and player benefits and staffing and more — in order for BYU football to succeed on the national stage is a spiral still spinning through the air. Earlier this month, he said he would always “fight” for his players and his team to be treated like a top-flight operation.

Does he yet need to fight on? Or is the fighting now done?

Will Vorkink and his bosses find ways to achieve that? He and they had better. They have to. An angry football coach could lead to a dysfunctional football program, and since football is by far the most important revenue-generating sport at BYU, the one that brings the school and its sponsoring religion the most attention, the exposure that they crave, Vorkink has no real choice.

The lack of a well-tuned, prosperous football program would make rather insignificant this fresh reshaping of BYU athletics. If BYU intends to compete with the country’s best in the country’s favorite, most-watched, most-cared-about sport, and turn enough of a profit en route to help float all of its other athletics, feeding the right bird and the right beast is, and always was, a no-brainer.