Quarterback Ryder Lyons, one of the highest-rated football players BYU has ever landed, is going on a Latter-day Saint mission to Orlando, Florida, before suiting up for the Cougars.
Tight end Brock Harris, another highly rated player, is going on a church mission to Spokane, Washington, before donning helmet and pads for the Cougars.
That’s business as usual for athletes at BYU. Over half of the players currently on the Cougars’ football roster served church missions.
What is not business as usual is that Lyons and Harris say they will serve one-year proselytizing missions, not the standard two-year stints. They’ve said it out front, all loud and proud, happy to put their football careers on hold in the name of Jesus for a season, but not for two or three, as is the norm.
Both have intentions of playing not just at BYU but also in the NFL, and not wanting to jeopardize those dreams or delay them further, Lyons and Harris say serving their God and their church full time for one year is better than not serving at all.
Hard to argue the point. They’ll do it their way. They want to preach simultaneously, and return to play together. That’s their blueprint — baptize and then ball.
One year of selfless service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As in, the best one year of their lives. And, thereafter, with hard work and good fortune, a decade or more of spinning and catching passes.
But there are problems, potential and real, attendant with those intentions. Some of them are ecclesiastical, some of them practical. Some deal with the truncated chance to bear testimony, some center on the hardship of competing with a teammate named Bear.
Calls for proselytizing missions for young men, according to church policy, are for a full 24 months, with rare exceptions. Football isn’t generally thought of as one of them. That elongated stretch of service is part of what makes volunteering for a mission such a huge sacrifice and commitment and, according to the uber-faithful, a blessing.
Either way, Lyons and Harris are not the first or the only BYU players who have planned on and completed shortened missions. Enoch Watson, a quarterback recruit out of Arizona, recently returned from his full-time call in Chile, having been honorably released after serving for about 17 months in order to start in on football training at BYU in December.
From the church’s view, is that a thing now? Is that … you know, OK?
It was for Watson. He originally wanted to serve a whole two years, but he also had a set date in mind to return from his mission — in October 2025. Ideally, he would have preferred to begin his service as a 17-year-old so he could return according to his football schedule. But that couldn’t be arranged. The start, then, of his mission was pushed back, but that didn’t change his plan to come home last month, which he did. He ended up serving seven months shy of the norm, with official approval from his stake president and his mission president, and whichever additional church leaders needed to sign off on his deal.
“I had a great mission,” Watson says, eager now to get back to prepping for the game he loves.
A brief aside here: In the faith’s vernacular, the unmistakable charge is for every “worthy young man” who is able to serve a full-time mission. It’s presented as a duty, a sacrifice to be worn like a badge of honor. God wants you. Young women can serve, too, if they feel like it. But for men, it may be deemed from the top down a privilege, but even more, it’s an obligation. That’s the way it’s preached and presented from the pulpit to boys, from toddler ages on up, and to their parents.
(Chris Caldwell | Special to The Tribune) Pine View senior Brock Harris during a game against Dixie High School Friday, Sept. 12, 2025.
Not everyone listens. The mission thing isn’t for everyone. Some teenage Latter-day Saints are, indeed, eager to serve. Others go haltingly. Some happily don’t go at all. Some don’t go and then feel a degree of shame for not going.
Some apply to serve, they get their call to wherever — applicants have no say as to the location where they’ll serve — and sometime after they arrive at their assigned destination, they decide missionary work is not their cup of Postum. They do not complete the full two-year service, instead exiting the mission early.
Unfortunately, when those missionaries come home before the traditional designated time, too often they carry with them a cultural stigma. They sometimes have a kind of scarlet letter carved into their foreheads. If they’re not made to sense that from family members or fellow congregants, they sense it from so much of what teachers and leaders have ingrained in their impressionable consciousnesses and consciences.
That treatment or the self-perception of that treatment, though such judgments may be lessening, is beyond unfortunate. It’s hurtful, harmful and downright ridiculous. In the context of a supposedly charitable religion, none of that should ever exist. But it’s real to those on the receiving end who feel it. Any believer who serves any amount of time or no time should be honored for who they are, for what they do.
Those who overcome that negative vibe or avoid it completely should be commended. I have a friend, a fine dude, who laughingly says his mission was “the best eight days of my life.”
Lyons and Harris don’t seem to have any double-clutching or self-doubt about their plans. Watson says his worked out well for him.
If they say they are going on one-year missions, or 17-month trips, so be it. Good for them. But their mission calls officially are, were, and will be for 24 months because that’s what the church protocol is for young men. For young women, it’s 18 months. Older so-called senior missionaries, within certain guidelines, can fully choose the duration of their service.
Everybody knows the rules. And the church, on paper at least, isn’t changing them, not officially, not all out in the open, even for five-star athletes whom Alabama and Ohio State lusted after, who instead chose church-owned BYU. There might be a private wink and a nod, but the church isn’t telling missionary prospects that the transfer portal is open in the mission field, that they can opt out or choose how long they’ll serve.
Even if that’s what the church did for Watson, and what it should do for everyone.
I get it. Doing so would create exactly what the church wants to avoid: chaos. If every missionary had an open choice as to when he or she could go home with honors — other than in extenuating cases of health and well-being — the organizational inconsistencies and hassles that would emerge would be an administrative challenge. If mission leaders have, say, 200 missionaries in their area, managing 200 different itineraries would be arduous. But not impossible.
As it is, of course, individual missionaries can choose to return early. They can leave whenever they want, if they want. Most end up fulfilling their two-year deal as traditionally agreed to. They’re not held as prisoners, but if they do bail … then may come the disapproval, the stigma, the scarlet letter from some overly zealous church members.
Pity.
If Lyons and Harris state up front their abbreviated intentions, that partially alleviates problems at the back end, or it should, just as it did for Watson. Besides, they have football to play.
If such athletes set a precedent, the question is: Will other prospective missionaries seek to do likewise? A gifted pianist, perhaps, or an eager engineering student. If it’s good for the jocks, is it good for all comers? The straight answer is, well, yes, that could work, benefiting the church and the individuals streamlined to their specific needs.
Finally, under this scenario comes the aforementioned Lyons-Bachmeier complication. Which is to say, traffic jam.
BYU’s current quarterback, just a freshman, is becoming a star, has already become one by way of his stellar performances. If he plays all four years at BYU, and Lyons returns for the 2027 season, that could force Cougar coaches into making a difficult choice of their own — deciding between Bachmeier, by then a possible Heisman candidate, and the five-star kid whose talent is as impressive as it is obvious.
Even if Lyons were content to sit for a year, watching and learning, Bachmeier would still have yet another season of eligibility remaining. Unless he progresses enough to be a strong NFL draft possibility after his junior year or he transfers, something would have to give. Throw guys like Watson in the mix, and heaven only knows how it will all turn out.
Could anyone see Lyons reasonably waiting for two seasons before taking the field? And what of Harris, who all along planned on coming to BYU in tandem with Lyons? How would he feel about such a delay?
Orthodoxy would call for Lyons and Harris to simply follow protocol and serve out their missions for two years and then get back to football. But orthodoxy pays no mind to what an athlete desires or risks. It has no clock ticking, has no impatience about, no thirst for, no dreams of finding glory in college ball and in the NFL.
Like Steve Young, a faithful guy who never went on a mission and the best quarterback to ever play at BYU, they can serve their church well in other ways — by being a decent human, by helping those in need, by setting a good example and by winning games on God’s green turf, the verdant ground that beckons them.