Provo • Caleb Etienne saw the comments Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy made about him on his way out.
And for the last five months, BYU’s newest offensive lineman took the high road.
“Caleb just felt like he got beat out,” Gundy said back in April when Etienne entered the transfer portal. “So he left. But that is his choice.”
Gundy proceeded to explain his disdain for the spring transfer portal — mainly centered on Etienne’s absence.
“People are realizing the portal is there for a variety of reasons,” Gundy said. “Players can get more money in NIL. They can be a player that is late in their career and just say, ‘I want to do something different. I want to go somewhere new.’ Or a guy says, ‘I am not going to be a starter; I want to go be a starter.’ So as of now we have one guy, which would be Caleb, that didn’t feel like he was going to start here. And he was going to lose his job, so he wanted to go somewhere else.”
But now that Etienne is settled in at BYU and in the rotation to start, he was finally ready to give his take on Gundy’s remarks.
“That is something you really just got to let soak in. Wait until game day to come and prove them wrong,” Etienne said. “It just shows what type of coach he is, if you ask me. But at the end of the day, you can’t really do anything about it. You just got to move on and keep getting better. Stay humble.”
BYU will travel to Stillwater on Nov. 25 for the final game of the regular season.
“I’m excited to play against [the] guys [I] practiced against everyday,” Etienne said. “It is going to be a good game for sure. It is a long time from now. You just got to be patient and take it day by day.”
In the meantime, Etienne is still getting acquainted with his new program. He entered the portal in April and just a few days later was in Provo. He never visited Utah, but took a chance on BYU offensive line graduate assistant Brayden Kearsley.
The two worked together at OSU and Kearsley called him first. Around 40 other schools reached out, including Colorado and Deion Sanders, but Etienne followed the connection.
“I had a lot of other options,” he said. “I just ignored it because I knew where I wanted to go. I had it in my mind.”
For a 6-foot-8, 310-pound lineman, the NIL market was there. Etienne started 13 games at Oklahoma State last year at left tackle. But he made it clear, NIL was not a factor leading him to a different Big 12 destination.
“I wasn’t worried about any of that. I just wanted to find somewhere where I was going to be accepted,” he said. “You know, just feel like home really. I really didn’t care about NIL. They knew where my priorities were. They are taking care of me. But other than that, I wasn’t really worried about it.”
The bigger football question is where will Etienne actually play? BYU’s left tackle spot isn’t open because of potential first-round pick Kingsley Suamataia. It means that Etienne will likely have to switch over the right side and compete with Brayden Keim.
BYU’s depth chart still isn’t solidified.
“Probably might drag on since we don’t play anybody,” Etienne admitted.
Yet, Etienne is fine with that. He made his choice to leave OSU and find a different spot. And after everything that happened, he feels like it is the right choice.
“There is a lot of competition,” he said. “A lot of guys that transferred. So we have a lot of talent and a lot of depth that played a lot of games. So it really is just trying to see who will be that first five come that first game.”
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