Rumors are a devilish thing, difficult to control, difficult to confirm or dispel, difficult to ignore and resist.

Truth is equally tough to establish, if it still matters at all these days. And maybe half-truths are as damaging as utter falsification. On a personal note, if everything that has been written or said about me through the years were actually true, I’d not only hate myself, the people who are important to me would hate me, too.

Fortunately, it hasn’t been, I don’t and they don’t.

Maybe the same applies to you. Live long enough and it probably will.

But if there were gossip running rampant about you, possibly originating out of the unknown, what would you do? Would you deny it or brush it aside or simply let it be? Would you call on public relations to come to the rescue, to issue a denial on a prominent message board and move on to a better day?

Point is, when stories start flying, they soar. When stories of — oh, I don’t know — about an athletic director being fired or leaning up hard against dismissal surface on some wing of social media, next thing, people blow past just wondering and talking about it and start believing it.

I felt for BYU athletic director Brian Santiago in recent days when whispers turned into shouts regarding his job status. Maybe I’m making it worse by even bringing it up, but it already is up there, out there, everywhere.

That chatter included all kinds of speculation, much of it inaccurate, or at least not completely accurate. Kalani Sitake happened to be saying, in so many words, that he expected BYU to follow through on the promises directed to him when he was considering whether to take that lucrative coaching offer from Penn State, and it was easy to presume that Santiago might be falling short in that regard. Or maybe the hubbub started because the athletic director was doing a lousy job. Or maybe he was getting the supposed heave-ho for the most personal reason of all — his personality. Did you read or hear that he is seen by some as being abrupt, abrasive, downright rude, not just a jerk, but a phony, too?

BYU associate athletic director Jon McBride caused a ruckus when he posted a subsequent message on cougarboard.com that Santiago’s job status had not changed. The fact that a BYU official would make such an unusual move, posting a defense of a colleague on a fan site, only stirred up additional questions.

Since all of that happened, I asked around at BYU whether any of the rumors carried any weight. What I was told by some — yeah, they did not want to be named — was that Santiago is not particularly well liked in some corners on campus. He’s worked there for decades now, long enough to rub some folks raw and to gain support from others. No big deal, really. Being a sweet-faced athletic director might be important when it comes to soothing certain beasts, especially extremely rich ones who donate truckloads of money to the school. Some people judge individuals not by how they treat the powerful, but rather by the manner in which they treat the powerless.

Former AD Tom Holmoe usually passed that test with ease. Santiago? Depends on who you ask. Either way, not sure that glad-handing rank-and-file fans is at the top of the list of requirements for the head of the department.

Winning is.

If Sitake is mad at Santiago, that’s a legitimate problem. The football coach, like at more than a few highly ranked schools, now wields more authority than the athletic director does. The AD is the head coach’s boss in name only, not in the real world. Proof of that comes via comparing the paychecks.

If Sitake is angry because basketball coach Kevin Young gets what he wants, even as Sitake does not receive the same treatment, that problem is more than legitimate. Football generates a whole lot more cash for BYU than basketball or any other sport — by a thousand miles, and almost as many millions.

Santiago has to repair the bridge over that gap, if it’s as ruptured as some sources at BYU say it is.

And then, in the midst of such talk, BYU announces that it’s hired a new “deputy athletic director,” a veteran administrator out of Kentucky, stirring more noise about what’s really happening inside BYU sports.

Where the exact truth is beats me. What’s fact, what’s fiction? Finding what’s real there is like the famous parable about the blind men who reach out to touch an elephant, and then guess what’s actually in front of them. Is it a wall? A snake? A spear? A tree? Is it a rope?

If it’s my charge to determine what the elephant is, to find the truth, the nitty-gritty of it, consider that call unclear, undone. McBride says Santiago is safe. Some say he’s doing a bang-up job. Others say he’s in tight with some boosters, liked by some coaches, and disliked by some.

What I know is that the man is, as McBride indicated, still employed as BYU’s top sports administrator. Is he perfect? Nah. Who is? Either way, I feel for him. Not enough to ignore and shy away from what’s been launched into the public space, but enough to ease off and let him do his job his way.

He doesn’t have to be Mr. Congeniality. He doesn’t have to be Mr. Holmoe. He doesn’t have to be Mr. Rogers, as long as Kalani Sitake is satisfied — satisfied and getting what he was promised when he stayed.