Speaker 1: What's going on in the world of Cougar Athletics.
Speaker 2: Here from players, coaches and experts on all the latest
happenings with the Cougars.
Speaker 3: Welcome back Cougar Sports. One of three nine ninety eight
point three ESPN the Fan. I'm beencruital broadcasting from our
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BAU Sports. We're gonna welcome in a former BYU Athletic
director to discuss the vision, the future of BYU Athletics
and the turning of the tides of the robbery.
Speaker 1: What's happening and why it's happening.
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of Utah dot Com. All right, let's get out to
the hotline. Welcome in former b WHYU Athletic Director. We
got Rondo Felberg on the line. Rondo, how are you living.
Speaker 2: Great? Obviously after last weekend? How could I not be great? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, three in a row that hasn't
happened since the early nineties. It's a bit of a
monumental turning of the tide, if you will. In this
rivalry game. You were there in attendance, You saw it.
What are you seeing from your perch? Why is it
that BYU is finally capable of getting it on a
winning streak now in the modern era.
Speaker 2: Well, the short answer is, I don't know. It seems
to me to be more about Utah's weaknesses than BYU strings.
Having said that, BYU is solid across the board. You
look at that team. There are no weaknesses, not unbelievably
great anywhere, but they are strong everywhere, and so you've
got a BYU team that really doesn't have any weaknesses.
And so any team that is coming to the game
with weaknesses, if BYU can find them, they'll exploit them.
And they did that against Utah. They've done that every game.
They've got a great coaching staff and they do a
wonderful job of finding the weaknesses in the opposing team
and exploiting them. Sometimes that reveals itself just by looking
at the films that are provided to them of the
preceding games. Sometimes it happens right there on the field.
And we watched that the other night. We saw BYU
and dust its game plan on the fly, and oh
my goodness, it was so fun to watch them pound
all Jane Martin and Bear Blackmeyer and and all of
a sudden, the wide receivers, well not just wide receivers,
because our Carson ryan Is plays like a wide receiver,
but they those guys became decoys. And every time you thought,
oh my goodness, they're just decoys, I'm gonna ignore them, boom,
next thing you know, they've caught a pass and away
they go. So it was it was just really fun
for me to watch.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm telling you right now this this BYU football
teams doing some monumental things. And one of the things
that I've been studying here Kyle Whittingham.
Speaker 1: When he has to.
Speaker 3: Play in the same conference as b YU, the Mountain
West Conference Sarah as the head coach from two thousand
and five to twenty ten and then most recently the
last two seasons in the Big Twelve, he's actually only
three and five three wins, five losses in the rivalry.
So I wonder if conference affiliation and equal resources have
something to do with it.
Speaker 1: What say you?
Speaker 2: That's a possibility?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: I think. I think BYU had a real step up
of when they came into the Big Twelve. I think
it was more about BYU entering the Big Twelve from
independence than they being in the same conference as UTAH.
I don't think they had to be in the same conference.
They just had to have access to the resources that
come from being in a power conference.
Speaker 1: It sure helps, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Rondo, What does the future from your perspective look like
for BYU athletics now that they do have equal resources,
Now they are on an even playing field with not
only you, Dah, but the likes of college football.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Brian Santiago is a great choice as
an athletic director. Brian is the guy that we need
right now. Brian is smart, he's experienced, and Brian can
be tough when he needs to be tough. Nobody's going
to push Brian around. And he's the right guy in
the right place at the right time. And so I'm
delighted that we have Brian there now. I'm also delighted
that we've got mister smooth as glass Chad Lewis standing
right behind him with the big smile on his face.
Speaker 1: It does help. They have the right people booing you up.
Speaker 3: You're only as good as the people you hire and
the people that are taking some of the admin load
there in the athletic department.
Speaker 1: And you know that better than anybody.
Speaker 3: You got to hire the right people around you in
order to find success. And right now, BYU's positioned competitively
to make waves not only in the football world, but
the basketball world. I don't know which one you're more
excited about. If you're a fan of the basketball team
or the football team. What about you, where's your level
of excitement compared to these two.
Speaker 2: This is going to sound a little bit corny, but
it depends on the season in the year. Right now,
I'm more excited about football. Two months from now, I'll
have a different answer.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm right there with you. UNC's coming to town,
which is pretty crazy. You talk about the high profile
football games that BYU finally has under the lights of
lavel Fox, big noon kickoff game day wanting to come
to town as well. Well, some of the premier basketball
blue bloods are coming to pro now as well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I mean it was interesting that sort
of the behind the scenes on negotiating that went on. Basically,
North Carolina said that would be suicide to come to
the Marriage Center. We're not going there, and so the
compromise was the Delta Center. Now, the Delta Center is
about as close to home court advantage as by you
could have. But they're willing to play us there, but
they would not play us in the Marriage Center.
Speaker 3: And I think, b why you's paying them a hefty
sum of five hundred thousand dollars or so just to
come to the Delta Center.
Speaker 2: Well, that is another thing that is a nice luxury
to have. It's nice to have boosters and supporters who
are willing to put their money where their mouths are
and and and provide that kind of of arsenal uh
for Kevin Young and Colony's taki to do what they
need to do.
Speaker 3: Did we have did we have the donor base? So like,
let's go back in time to the nineties, okay, early
two thousands, and you know, there we were under.
Speaker 1: Different UH rule by the n C double A.
Speaker 3: It was an arbitrary rule, this oligopoly, this this college
athletics cabal that that that would essentially cut the legs
out from everyone. UH, that that went against the blue bloods.
They were the ones that that that essentially had the power.
Now we're in a free market, capitalistic n I L
Transfer portal world in which you know, everyone can pay
what they are willing to pay for players, for coaches,
for their organizational design?
Speaker 1: Did BYU in the nineties?
Speaker 3: And if let's go back in the past and if
we had the free market system that we have right
now that could allocate as much funds as we wanted to,
did we have the donor base to execute back in
the nineties like we are in present day with the
resources that we have, If we didn't have the rules
and regulations of the past.
Speaker 2: We had the donor base, and we had willing donors. Yeah,
we just wouldn't cheat.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: The difference between US then and US now is just
a BYU will not cheat. Back then, everybody else was cheating,
and that's really what's happened. The change in college athletics
has been that the coaches who were similar to BYU
and the administrators finally just drew up their hands and said,
we're not going to do it anymore. And so they
just said, Okay, everybody can do what these other guys
have been doing for the last several decades and not
acknowledging it. And so when what the other guys used
to do, which was cheat, became fair game, all of
a sudden, you saw the depth of the BYU donor base.
I cannot tell you how many times I met with willing,
unbelievably supportive BYU boosters and supporters who wanted to help
out and were more than willing to write the checks.
But we would have to have them literally write a
check to bring them young university. And you look at
the magnificent facilities all across campus that we had because
it couldn't be channeled back then straight to the athletic
department like it can now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's interesting in and of itself because it
had to go to the school first philanthropies and then
trickle down to the athletic department.
Speaker 1: When did that change?
Speaker 3: When did when could you finally donate directly to the
athletic department and the athletic department get was able to
maybe just eat what it killed. As far as the
donor corporate sponsorship avenues that they have in the present day.
Speaker 2: Well, you may recall there was a swimmer at Arizona
State University by the name of Grant House who sued
Arizona State and the NCAA claiming that that they were
using the athletes naming, imaging likeness and not allowing the
athlete to benefit from it, and that that was an
unfair restraint on trade and it compromised their courte constitutional rights.
That went all the way to the Supreme Court. But
that was what changed as the as the trial court first,
then the appeals court next ruled in favor of House,
and it was headed to the Supreme Court. That's when
the NCAA finally shrugged their shoulders and said we get it,
and so they lifted all of those those restrictions and barriers,
and so it would have come anyway, I think at
some point. But what precipitated it was the House case.
Speaker 3: But more so than anything of what I was trying
to get at, And I didn't properly formulate the question
when did it occur within BYU as an institution for
donors to be able to directly contribute funds to the
Athletic Department rather than the just the institution happened.
Speaker 2: It happened as soon as the NCAA lifted the lid.
And I don't have that date on my mind, but
as soon as the NCAA said all right, we get it,
BYU was right there. We were ready, and we had
donors that were ready, and Tom Holmo and Brian Santiago
and all of those other guys in the Athletic Department
had made sure that those relationships were intact and that
those potential donors were ready. And I can tell you
that there's no better group of donors on the planet
than our donors. I loved, loved, loved that part of
my job when I was Athletic Director was going out
and meeting with donors and meeting with these people who
were just they basically said you just tell us what
and when, and it was. It was a fun thing.
Speaker 1: Rondo Felberg, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: Former BYU athletic director pontificating on the past and what
could have been had the athletic department operated under the
same rules. We were just waiting for the floodgates to
be open. We were just waiting for the approval to
do it in a fair way where all of the
the institutions could compete at the same level. I love it, Rondo,
real quick, what do you think the record will be
in the next five games for the BAYU Cougar? Do
you think they end up undefeated in the regular season
and head to the Big twelve championship game.
Speaker 2: Well, if I have a weakness as a former athletic administrator,
I was a fan long before I was an administrator,
and so.
Speaker 4: It's very hard for me to to sort of calm
my emotions down and use just my head than my
analytic ability.
Speaker 2: But my heart says BYU is going undefeated and BYU
is going to do what they need to do. I mean,
there is nothing better in the whole world for the
grander mission of BYU Athletics than for our football and
basketball teams, which are most visible sports to be successful.
When those young men and young women with their smiling
faces and their badges on their chests knock on doors,
there is nothing better in the world for them than
the people on the other side of the door to
have been watching BYU Sports on TV and say, come
on in. I don't really know that much about what
you want to talk about. I want to talk about
this bear Bachmeier kid. Can we take a few minutes
to talk about him? Well, of course, stionnaries become instant
pretend experts on all things bear Bachmeyer, all things to
do with Kevin Young and Kevin's programming, and that gets
him in the doors and then everything else always from there.
Speaker 3: Love it, Ronda, We appreciate you, Love you, and thanks
so much for spending some time with us in this segment.
Let us know if you need anything from us. We
look forward to chatting with you in the press box
once again later on this year. There you have it.
That's Rondo Felberg. Shout out to him former BYU Athletic director.
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We'll be back though. This is Cougar Sports on one
O three nine ninety eight point three ESPN.
Speaker 1: The fans