A top LDS Church official said BYU sports would never ‘pay for play.’ Then came millions more in athletics spending.

Provo • When Tanner Wall grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., his weekends fell into a familiar rhythm.

He would play his games on Friday, watch BYU on Saturday and pile into the church pews on Sunday. His uncle, J.R. Thulin, played offensive line for the Cougars’ football team and his aunt, Brooke Thulin, was a midfielder on the soccer team. Wall dreamed of following in their footsteps one day, mixing faith and athletics at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ flagship school.

Meanwhile, he watched his favorite team punch above its weight class every weekend. It was part of the charm of BYU fandom — rooting for the plucky school that could spring an upset, flash on the national scene, but never really blossom into a behemoth. Fans understood: Faith came first in Provo, and BYU would never spend like Alabama or Texas.

Wall took pride in it, vowing one day to join BYU’s fight. But that fight looks different these days.

“I can remember some of the one-off times. Like Jimmer [Fredette] and [four-star quarterback] Jake Heaps coming to BYU. But national success was never consistent,” said Wall, now a captain on BYU’s defense. “Now it has grown so much. And I think the more success that we have, the more attention it brings to the school and the church. It’s great.”

Not everyone in Provo feels that way, though.

Seemingly overnight, the perception of BYU athletics has changed. Since joining the Big 12, the Cougars have signed head football coach Kalani Sitake to a lucrative extension and put together enough money to reel in a potential NBA head coach, Kevin Young, to lead the hoops program. BYU’s total athletics budget has more than doubled since 2020.

In the past year alone, the donor base has pooled millions to sign some of the best recruits in the country. Potential top NBA draft pick AJ Dybantsa picked BYU over Kansas, North Carolina and Alabama for a reported sum of $4.5 million. That was followed by five-star quarterback Ryder Lyons choosing the Cougars over powerhouses USC and Oregon. The teenager, who is about to serve a one-year mission for his church, will reportedly make $3 million before ever playing a snap.

BYU made its name as a scrappy underdog playing for a higher power and adhering to different standards. Now it’s a program expected to make runs to the Final Four and College Football Playoff.

It has led some to ask the uncomfortable question: Is this modern version of Cougar athletics at odds with BYU’s mission?

“There’re two seemingly incongruous principles at play here,” said Matt Harris, a history professor and a leading Latter-day Saint expert at Colorado State University Pueblo. “One is they have this spiritual and religious mission they want to uphold. On the other hand, they want to compete in the Big 12. I do not see those as congruent.”

Standing for something more

The church’s commissioner of education Clark Gilbert, who, as a general authority Seventy, is one of the highest-ranking Latter-day Saints, had a similar upbringing to Wall in at least one way: He grew up rooting for his faith’s school every Saturday.

“Somehow on the weekends when BYU was winning all those games, it said to me that I’m part of something special. My faith isn’t something so strange and so weird that we can’t perform,” Gilbert said last October on the “Y’s Guys” podcast. “They stand for something more.”

But after BYU jumped out to a 7-0 start in football last season, the general authority drew a clear line in the sand for BYU athletics. While he was happy the school was winning, he said, the church would never allow athletic success to distract from BYU’s true mission. That’s “helping people find Jesus Christ and his gospel,” BYU’s athletics department said.

“Winning expands the platform,” Gilbert acknowledged. “But here is the tension. The temptation is, if winning will do this, then we need to win at all costs. And that is what we have to preserve against. We want them to succeed, but there are a lot of pressures put on college athletics today. And it can be very tempting to become just like another college team and think the ends justify the means. BYU has to stand alone, and if we don’t, people will say ‘BYU who?’”

So he laid out boundaries to keep the university from “drifting away” from its bedrock principles. BYU would never pay coaches at the highest level or be the highest bidder on a player, he said. Athletes at BYU would always reflect the values of the church, whether that meant speaking at fireside chats or serving on mission trips.

More than anything, he said, the church would never let BYU be known as a “pay for play” school. Otherwise, Gilbert said, “this investment is hard to justify.”

“I hear people say, ‘We have to be like Texas and Alabama, more money, more facilities, higher payment. We have to catch up.’ And that is wrong,” Gilbert said. “We can never become a ‘pay for play’ culture. We would undermine everything at BYU if that comes out. It is tempting to buy one player at a time. If they don’t fit the mission, it would unravel everything.”

But the perception hasn’t always matched that ideal.

People around the college landscape view the Cougars as major spenders; BYU made a CBS list of the top three deepest-pocketed basketball programs right after national powerhouse Kansas and ahead of Kentucky.

The night Young was hired, he told The Salt Lake Tribune, “This place wants to win, and it has the [financial] backing to do it.”

He’s been right so far.

In basketball, BYU put together its best recruiting class in program history, thanks to a roster that costs more than $15 million. The prized recruit, Dybantsa, is set to make more than $4.5 million, CBS reported. BYU’s financial offer was enough to make even Kansas blush.

“Traditional powerhouses like the Kansas Jayhawks, which initially pursued Dybantsa, appear to be opting out of this bidding war,” Sports Illustrated reported.

It wasn’t just Dybantsa. The Cougars poached Baylor guard Rob Wright III for a large name, image and likeness (NIL) payday, frustrating his old coach. Returning star Richie Saunders commanded a big paycheck, enough to delay his pursuit of playing in the NBA.

It led one BYU donor to boast to ESPN last February that “you’re not going to outbid us.”

School officials have since tried to walk that back, saying the booster spoke out of line.

“We will never lead out with money, and we won’t bring in recruits who are just searching for the highest bid. But we will be competitive in NIL and revenue share, to help bring in recruits who fit here and value the unique culture here,” BYU athletics said in a statement.

But the financial commitment is undoubtedly there.

The Athletic reported the average Big 12 basketball roster is worth $12.8 million. BYU’s men’s basketball payroll is widely expected to be above that.

On the football side, Sitake has also put together an unprecedented recruiting run. Lyons was the highest-rated recruit to commit to BYU in a decade. BYU also nabbed four four-star recruits and currently has a recruiting class ranked higher than Ole Miss, Texas Tech and other heavy spenders.

While BYU officials declined to be interviewed for this story, Cougars athletic director Brian Santiago has spoken proudly about the school’s new era.

“We’re going to be excellent. We’re going to be passionate about being nationally relevant,” he said. “In this world of college athletics, it’s imperative that we chase greatness. So, we’re not shying away from it.”

To some, that clearly fits with the school’s mission.

“I really do feel that BYU athletics, after probably our missionary program, is one of the biggest assets for the church, as far as exposure to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” said Wall, the BYU football captain who served a two-year mission in Brazil for the church before enrolling in Provo. “The more success we have, and the more we are in the spotlight, the athletes do a great job deflecting that back to BYU and back to Jesus Christ.”

Wall also believes BYU paying high-profile, non-Latter-day Saints is a positive. Former BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff, a Jewish athlete, and former basketball player Egor Demin, a Russian point guard now in the NBA, help to normalize the church to various audiences, Wall said, even if the backbone of the program is still return missionaries like himself. (BYU says 56 players on this year’s roster have served church missions.)

“It brings people’s guard down a little bit,” he said. “There’s a lot of tension about the church. So when they see normal, everyday people, or even people they might look up to as athletes, go to BYU, it’s like, ‘Oh, OK. These are great people who believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ.’”

In a statement, the BYU athletics department said its spiritual mission is “greatly enhanced when our influence is expanded” through winning teams and high-profile players. It added it needs “to be competitive” in NIL to do that.

“BYU is not a faith-based institution in name only. Our student-athletes are asked to do some different things here. The honor code asks a lot,” BYU athletics said. “All of our student-athletes are required to take religion classes as part of our curriculum. The impact of missionary service cannot be overstated. Service projects, devotionals, firesides and coaching staffs who are asked to live their religion earnestly and faithfully are all examples of ways that make BYU athletics a distinctive experience.”

Others remain skeptical.

Feeling a disconnect

Marc Buchanan, a lifelong BYU fan, is among those looking at BYU’s ascent with a side eye.

“I want to be competitive. I want to have a team to cheer for. But I also love what was special and unique about BYU. They were different, right?” he said. “If we hold ourselves up as being different, then we need to back that up and not play into becoming a football and basketball factory. There’s teams [that do that] if I want to cheer for Alabama. That’s out there for me.”

And that is the disconnect, according to scholars like Harris. The main goal of Alabama’s teams, after all, is to win. BYU’s athletic teams, at least on paper, largely exist to promote the faith, he said. As Gilbert said last year, “If it ever came down to the only way we stay [competitive] is to walk away from our values, that would be the end of BYU athletics.”

Harris said he is still struggling to understand how faith meshes with the money being spent on sports.

“They’re paying millions of dollars, and that changes the equation,” he said. “It’s just the perception. This is such a spiritual university, its mission. And all of a sudden now we’ve turned into a program that’s paying these kids, making these kids millionaires, right? How is this maintaining the spiritual mission of the university?”

Gilbert has heard these questions in his own dealings. “I have others who say, ‘We are the church of Jesus Christ on earth. We care about repentance and the gospel. We are helping poor people around the world. How can we be spending this much money on a game?” the education commissioner said.

Harris isn’t satisfied with BYU’s answers so far.

“They haven’t been able to articulate, in my opinion, a coherent vision of how all of this relates to their religious and spiritual mission,” he said. “One of the contradictions was, we’re competitive. We’re in this to win. Then in the next breath, they are saying‚ ‘We’re not spending nearly as much as other people.’ I’m just like, ‘Guys, you’re already in the water, own it.’”

Added Buchanan, the BYU fan: “Maybe we’re not number one for the bidder. But it’s millions of dollars, and it feels like a disconnect to me.”

Gilbert alluded to his disconnect last year, saying he would rather see BYU field average teams that hold true to the school’s mission rather than excellent teams “if the team doesn’t reflect the values of the church.”

Harris was thinking about how much the landscape has changed in recent years. When BYU got into the Big 12 conference, there was no NIL money or revenue sharing.

In his mind, BYU went into the Big 12 thinking it could operate the same way it always did and adhere to its traditional approach.

“Then the rug got ripped out from under BYU. They’re now in one of the world’s most competitive conferences, and they have to pony up all this money to compete. That something they were not expecting,” Harris said. “Now they’re scrambling to figure out how all of this money going out is compatible with the school’s mission.”

Sometimes he wonders, “Would they have bolted for the Big 12 after NIL was announced? Because they know if they’re going to be in this conference, they’ve got to pay the money out.”

Buchanan had similar thoughts.

“To me being a fan of BYU was always, ‘We’re going to be competitive, probably not going to win a national title.’ And now it seems like that’s shifted, where a lot of our chips are in on being competitive,” he said. “And is that really going to fill the mission? I don’t think so, personally.”

Buchanan joked that when he was a freshman at BYU, he would have answered differently. But now he has a daughter going to the school, and that mission is important to him.

He knows, along with many, that BYU isn’t likely to slow down on its path to athletic success anytime soon.