Gordon Monson: BYU continues to move further into the bright spotlight of college sports

Anyone who follows college sports has seen and heard BYU’s name mentioned a lot of late. A whole lot. For reasons that run counter to the very limitations formerly placed on the Cougars when chances for their national success were discussed. Typically, their chances for national success were not discussed, and that’s the main point here.

They are now.

Those who once ignored BYU or scoffed at its relevance in football and men’s basketball — and there were many who did so, present company included — are paying attention now. It’s not that long ago that no power conference took BYU seriously. Even worse, no major conference, for one reason or 10 others, wanted the Cougars in its league.

BYU begged to get in, somewhere, anywhere. It was the kid on the playground jumping up and down, waving his arms around, trying to get selected to play, trying to be seen. Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me, pick me.

Instead … well, you know the story. The Cougars went independent in football and threw in with the West Coast Conference in basketball, playing their road games against schools whose entire enrollment would have easily fit inside the Marriott Center, and in front of crowds that would have fit around your grandma’s dining room table.

All of it seemed a lousy fit. And every Cougar knew it.

On a national scale, BYU was seen as a nice — but kind of weird — not-so-little religious school out west in the Rockies somewhere, an outpost wedged between the Wasatch and a salty desert that had had its moments under LaVell Edwards in football and that seemed to draw a good number of fans and that liked to hold fast to its beliefs, stuff like refusing to play games on Sunday. The good folks out there rode around in horse-drawn buggies, delivering jugs of milk to neighbors and raising barns and such, right? The campus was filled with students who looked like Donny and Marie, with the occasional exception of a rebel quarterback who eschewed drinking caffeine-free soda, favoring instead a bedside bottle of Jack Daniels.

Those Cougars had their moments — their mascot was pretty good, their dance team great — but not that many of them.

They were too restricted by a recruiting base made small by the school’s strict Honor Code, and by a philosophy of recruiting that tended to actually try to follow NCAA rules and regulations, minus bags of cash passed along under the table. There were occasional indiscretions in that regard, and more than a few Cougars on campus found ways to get around or avoid the Honor Code police.

On the whole, though, BYU sought Eagle Scouts scrubbed clean by what Mom and Dad had taught them during Family Home Evenings, with a few guys mixed in from different backgrounds.

Not anymore.

Football to some extent and basketball to a major one have been turned all around at BYU. They had been creeping in that direction since the Cougars were invited into the Big 12. And once NIL bennies went from being cloaked — illegal — to being commonplace — beyond legal — BYU has utilized that money — stacks of it — to famously lure in the kind of talent it rarely got in the past.

It should be distinguished here that BYU’s owner, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith that has more money — nearly enough of it to build a temple on every city block of every city, and a national championship in every year — than King Farouk, says it does not funnel church funds into the chase for athletes, at least not directly in the form of NIL payments. Like a lot of other universities, BYU has some sweet facilities, but it leaves NIL payouts to boosters and others at and around the school who badly want BYU to win.

Contrary to what is said by some old-fashioned critics of this new day of college sports, some of those critics coming from within the sports themselves — coaches, etc. — there’s nothing wrong with paying athletes the going rate for their services. Coaches who bemoan the newfound freedom granted to athletes who can play where they want for the amount of cash they can demand, by way of judges’ rulings, are hypocrites, given the amount of money coaches are paid.

Who cares how much athletes are paid?

The old days of supposedly playing for — and staying at — a school out of love for that institution, for the glory of amateurism, are long gone. Fans may feel that way, their devotions to colleges running deep for reasons only Freud could figure out, but athletes now are receiving what the market will offer them. Sure, they may learn to love the school itself, too, but that’s their business. Meantime, they’re out on the court or the field busting their humps to win.

The one unfortunate aspect to this whole process is if it causes ticket prices to fly through the roof, to the point of making it difficult for fans to attend games. But even that is driven by a free market, and that, folks, is the American way.

If BYU can draw in football and basketball players because it has filthy-rich donors who are motivated by the aforementioned emotion to hand over payments to players that might provide generational wealth — regardless of whether they ever turn pro — to talented 18-year-old point guards and quarterbacks, good for the Cougars. They’ll lose some recruits and transfers, too.

On account of the fact that there are numerous schools with deep-pocketed collectives, it should be noted that those schools, in many cases, must offer more than just money. If Program A is waving $2 million in the face of a player, and Program B is waving a similar amount, what makes the difference?

Often, it’s the quality of the coaching staff on hand and what it can offer in the way of teaching and training for what is presumed to be a possible career in professional sports. Kevin Young and his assistants certainly appear to be in position to do that.

Hence, AJ Dybantsa signs up, Rob Wright transfers in from Baylor, and yet-to-be-acquired talents get in line, too. In football, Keanu Tanuvasa transfers from Utah because of a number of factors, everything from faith to connection with certain coaches at BYU to, yeah, money.

Those who moan and groan that a school like BYU can simply buy a championship without greater regulation are ignoring a few facts: 1) It’s always been that way, whether or not fans knew about inducements given to star players, and 2) players, regardless of how great they are, still have to be coached and coordinated by smart mentors, and 3) athletes should be allowed to play where they want for whatever reasons are most important to them. They are not official employees, as currently designated, who sign binding contracts with schools. The NCAA missed and messed over that boat long ago.

If revenue sharing kicks in and the landscape is slightly altered again … we’ll see how that works out. For the time being, BYU is following the rules and drawing in athletes who may or may not help it win at a high level. Waiting on that, as well.

One other notable at BYU goes back to the Honor Code — the behavioral standard that in theory requires students to go without things such as drugs, booze and premarital sex — and the answer to an obvious-but-significant question: Will 5-star athletes follow it?

If an athlete is being paid a few million bucks to perform on the court or the field, what happens, how complicated does it get, if said athlete gets caught transgressing the code? The stock answer is — he’ll be disciplined. BYU has done that in the past. Will it do so under new circumstances? Who will advocate for the athlete, who will want to interrupt the pursuit of championships?

BYU is said to prefer to handle such situations privately, but … here’s a hot take: If an individual like Dybantsa and/or others of his stature run afoul of the code, that’s going to make national headlines. It seems as though rough treatments of athletes at BYU have diminished over more recent days, months and seasons. Either athletes are better behaved or BYU is easing off those treatments a bit. Who knows?

And it could also be that driven athletes — some of whom will only be on campus for a relatively short period before turning pro — are more motivated to concentrate solely on their sport and not fiddle-faddle around with extracurriculars.

Either way, BYU is making a name for itself as a serious contender, most certainly in basketball, having hired NBA darling Kevin Young as coach, and allowing its boosters to do their thing, and maybe in football, as well, considering the success the Cougars enjoyed this past season.

The name BYU has been seen and heard in national sports reports more over the past six or seven months than it ever has before, with the possible exception of the 1984 national football championship, and most of that was hubbub over whether the Cougars deserved that honor.

There may be controversy mixed in with the commentary now, regarding what’s been discussed here, the fact that BYU, in some cases, is beating out Duke and Kansas and Kentucky and Utah and other great programs around the country. Whatever.

More than that, when BYU is talked about now, it’s with awe and amazement and reverence for the way the Cougars are all in on sports. We’re all amazed at what’s happening and wondering — there are no guarantees — to what exactly it could lead. The nice — but kind of weird — not-so-little religious school out west in the Rockies somewhere is being found by star athletes and by those who make a living covering them.

Another certainty: the Big 12 is more than glad to call BYU its own.

Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.