BYU Football Sailing Stormy Seas During Big 12 Championship Week

BYU is 11-1. They play Texas Tech for the right to call themselves champions of the Big 12 Conference this Saturday in Arlington, Texas. If they win, they will be headed to the College Football Playoff to compete for a national championship.

Unfortunately, early this week, that feels like a back-page story.

Penn State is seriously interested in making BYU head coach Kalani Sitake their new head man in State College. According to multiple reports, the Nittany Lions have an offer on the table for Sitake to jump to the Big 10.

Nothing is imminent as of Monday early afternoon. However, this is a situation where there is certainly a fire under the smoke. There is a real chance Sitake deals the massive payday to don a darker shade of blue on the East Coast.

He addressed the media Monday morning and gave no details, unsurprinslgy.

Per Jackson Payne of the Deseret News, Sitake stated, “…I’ll address it (to the team), but also, they’re used to me saying, ‘Hey, (coaching rumors are) a good sign that things are going well for us.”

Sitake continued, “…We’re trying to finish the season the right way, it’s on us to be our best to play against Texas Tech. So as we go through this week and go through the prep, I also want them to live through all the moments and have a great experience and not waste a moment thinking about anything else.”

Sitake is saying all the right things of course, as one would expect. But the rumors are real and the distraction…equally real.

Even if the school, the team, and Sitake say they want to avoid distractions heading into one of the biggest football games in BYU history, it’s too late. The toothpaste is out, there’s no putting it back in.

There is a non-zero chance that BYU will be essentially head coach-less when they take the field at the home of the Dallas Cowboys, competing for a conference championship and a shot at the College Football Playoff.

Frankly, that’s one of the prices of success in the non-SEC-or-Big 10 world.

Sitake absolutely deserves a raise, if nothing else. He is 83-44 at BYU since beginning in 2016. Four of the last six seasons have ended in double-digit wins. Beginning in 2023, BYU entered Power Four status in the Big 12. After a rocky first season, the Cougars now have reached 11 wins in back-to-back seasons, going 22-3 since the beginning of 2024. There are very few college football programs who have been more successful than BYU over the last two seasons.

It seems like the ball is in BYU’s court to try and match, or at least compete, with Penn State’s offer to keep Sitake in Provo. Sitake and his assistants deserve to be well-compensated for their success the last two seasons.

With Sitake or not, the Big 12 will host its championship this Saturday. The players and coaches will try and shake off the distractions and prepare for the nation’s top defense in Texas Tech, and a team set to perhaps earn a bye as a top four team in the College Football Playoff should they beat BYU.

Certainly, this is not an ideal start to Conference Championship Week.