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in Kevin Reynolds of the Solid Tribune. Kevin, how thatck are.
Speaker 1: You, buddy?
Speaker 3: I'm good man.
Speaker 1: How are you living the dream?
Speaker 2: Man? Appreciate you hopping on and talking some ball with us.
What he's been recently publicizing there at the Solid Tribune.
Speaker 1: What you've been writing about recently, keV, Well.
Speaker 3: We just finished up the Kilani saga of last week,
so that was that was kind of the main thing
from a week ago, and now we kind of move
into an off season now where we have Utah making
private equity deals and by you trying to sayigure out
how it's going to get you know, break through to
the playoffs next year. And yeah, we'll move on to
basketball too.
Speaker 2: Well, let's discuss the Kalani Satake situation here.
Speaker 1: What did you make of it?
Speaker 2: What did you take away from that particular saga leading
up to the Texas Tech Big Twelve Championship game.
Speaker 3: A couple of things. First, I don't think I ever
really believe that Klana Sataki was actually going to leave
for Penn State or really anywhere, because Kilani is a
BYU guy. He grew up rooting for BYU, he played
for Lavelle Edwards, and I think he's in a really
good situation when you look overall at what he could
do at BYU if he got resources to do it,
with BYU being in the Big Twelve now having a
power Power Conference affiliation. He's won twenty two twenty what
is twenty two games in the last two years, and
that's the most of the Big Twelve over that time
has BYU in a championship game in the third year.
I mean, all these things that are very incredible accomplishments.
But at the same time, like I thought, BYU almost
put themselves in this position a little bit to where
you had a coach who had all this attachment to
the university, who was winning and highly successful, yet it
took this long to give him a contract extension and
give him the resources that he needs to compete and
go to the college playoff. When you look at around
and I think it's sometimes difficult to compare, but when
you look at how many resources the basketball program has
gotten over the last year, Kevin Young, Aj Debondza, Rob Wright,
you can go through the list, Richie Saunders staying in BYU.
Clearly BYU has invested at a very high level in
one sport, and I think the question was will it
invest in the high level in football too, And I
think Klanie play played the cards right and the fact
that he was saying, hey, like, look at all the
success that BYU football's had, It's the flagship program. No
matter how good basketball is, football is the flagship program
at BYU and pretty much every other university, football is
the flagship program. And like, I don't think he was
asking for a ton. I think he was asking for
what he needs. And I thought I was. I was
struck by kind of his reaction to it last week,
where I thought it was very authentic and very genuine
to who Kilanie is and the fact that he didn't
say that he had a list of demands that he
wanted Brian Santiago to meet. It wasn't that he was
asking to become the highest pig coach in college football
or that he wanted every single facility to look like
Texas or Alabama. I think he was just genuinely wanting
to feel respected at BYU. And the other part is
just can you get enough around BYU football to compete
going forward where they can be a consistent player in
the top fifteen. And I think now that that looks
like the foundation is in place to have that. But yeah,
I thought it just took It took a very long
time for BYU to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you hate the timing of it. It was probably
a little delayed. I don't know if you heard the
postgame comments from Kilani. Did you buy chance some of
the postgame comments you said, first of all, I was
trying to get the extension. Yeah, I was trying to
get the extension done way before. Even last year's extension
wasn't good enough. I think he's saying it wasn't maybe
long enough. He was just a two year extension. I
want to be here for the long run. I asked
for this stuff to be taken care of by the
bye week. It wasn't, and it lingered on, so I
didn't know if BYU was going to get that done.
Now we've got it done. It disrupted us for one day.
I tried to avoid it as much as I can
as head coach, but I don't make all the rules.
I'm just glad it got done eventually and that I'm
going to be here for a long time. I don't
ever have to plan about leaving. This is where it's at.
So you're saying, hey, this is where it's at. I've
always wanted to be here. I'm glad you guys were
able to Our guys were able to focus and keep
fighting along. But we were trying to get this done
a long time ago.
Speaker 3: Your thoughts reactions to that, No, Yeah, I think that's
just what we're talking about, is like, why did YU
kind of drag their feet on this for so long?
When also the coaching tool YU isn't exactly a super
long list. I mean, I know Jay Hill is in
the building, and I know he could potentially be a
head coach at BYU someday or if it's not YU,
he'll be a head coach somewhere else for sure, because
of how successful he's been going back to Weaver State
and then what he's done at BYU. But at the
same time, you have a guy in the building who
wants to be there, who has been extremely successful, has
has knows this job better than anyone, like pretty much
at this point now that he's been on the job
for over a decade, and they couldn't get it done.
They couldn't get it done until they were absolutely pushed
to the limit with Penn State coming in and a
couple of others. And the other part is it's like
the one thing I don't understand all the time from
like why it took so long, is it was only
a matter of time before the end of the season
hit or the end of the regular season hit, and
you have all these jobs open. Somebody was going to
be interested in Kawani Sataki, and if that was not
Penn State, it was going to be somebody else. That's
just the nature of when twenty two games in a
Power for conference and now there's a bunch of openings,
and if it didn't happen this year, it was probably
gonna happen next year, and it was going to be
a consistent thing until you get a deal in place
that is a long term deal. And so it felt
self inflicted to me from BYU side as to why
this became such a big deal on a week when
really BYU should be not focused on that, because this
is theoretically if you had a deal in place. This
is a time when you sign a recruiting class, the
best recruiting class you've had in a really long time,
best lender, Kaline Sintake, you have rider Liones brock Herris,
You're going to a Big twelve title game the third year,
and yet the entire conversation for the entire week is
about Penn State and Kline Satake. That to me feels
like feels like it was avoidable, and I don't know,
obviously in the end it was. We'll look back at
it and we will probably see the recruiting class and
the Big twelve title, but feels like it was definitely avoidable.
Speaker 2: Still top twenty one class, they got it done right,
and that could have it could have been bad, but
it ended up being good.
Speaker 1: Top twenty one class.
Speaker 2: If BYU is overachieving right now versus their composite score,
their recruiting ranking, I think they had the seventieth best
talent per two four seven in college football. They've gone
eleven and two in back to back seasons. They were
on the outside looking in of the College Fotball Playoff,
but they're knocking on the door right now. What's the
potential for this Cougar football team that continually overachieved versus
maybe the talents and even the resources that they've had
up to this point in their college football path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they. I think you're right. I was
talking to a recruit on Wednesday or last yeah, on
signing day last week, and he kind of said the
same thing of like BYU has been very successful with
recruiting classes that have not been among the best in
the Big twelve. If you look at the talent of
positive scores like you're talking about, and those aren't everything,
but I think they are something, and they're an indicator
of you know, how much like kind of what's the
ceiling of it the team can be, or like closing
the gap on teams like Texas Tech, who are obviously
at the top of the Big Twelve and now that
you can get a higher level of recruit consistently. I
think Brock Harris was a huge part of this recruiting
class in terms of being one of the first really
highly rated four to five star guys to sign on
to this class. Then you get Ryder Lions because of
the relationship there, and then everybody. I think once you
get a four or five star quarterback, depending on where
you look in the mix, then of course you can
start putting together a class that is in the top
twenty five consistently. And I think we still need to
see that build out for BYU. I don't think an
overnight six and those guys don't really get there until
twenty twenty seven. But yeah, I think the ceiling grows higher,
and now it's about closing the gap on the top
of the Big twelve, because you know, the Big Twelve,
for even though it's a powerful conference like we've seen,
like it's a one to two bid league and at
two bid league at most at least that's what it
looks like. So closing that gap on Texas Tech and
the heavy spenders in the Big twelve, like I think
by Us in the upper half of Lee for sure,
and they can definitely could be consistently there. But can
you consistently get back and maybe beat Texas Tech or
at least be more competitive. I think that is the
next goal, and I think that the recruiting classes like
that help.
Speaker 2: Kevin Reynold Sully Tribune here on ESPN the Fandom, Little
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eight zero eight seven. Kevin, what do you plan on
maybe publishing here this week and maybe next week? Give
us a little pref you give us a little taste
of what you guys are gonna be talking about at
the trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing. I mean,
I you know, the Bowl games are the Bowl games,
and I think those are probably fun to talk about
for a day or two. But you know, I don't
think they really move the needle that much. But you know,
I think that the biggest thing is about going into
the off season and what what by you need to do,
But also from a broader perspective, like what does it
look like? I think the big question in this state
will be for the next month or so about this
private equity deal from Utah. Oh yeah, and the ripple
effects around the Big twelve, the Big the Big ten,
the SEC and what does that actually look like? So
those are probably the toskers I think will be the
most interesting.
Speaker 2: Give you your take, and I'm sure your your your
counterparts there at the trip have written about the UH
the private equity deal with Outro Capital. What do you
make of it? What do we know about it? What
does this do for University of Utah athletics? What does
it all mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think probably I guess for me two things. One,
I think it was inevitable that somebody was going to
get private equity in the mix of college football, just
because it does take so much money to compete in
college athletics. If you're going to do REGs share and
you're going to do nil and you're going to have
to invest thirty twenty thirty forty million dollars into football
rosters to make the college football playoffs and get the
financial rewards of being competitive and the everything that comes
with being a college football playoff team. Obviously, these a
lot of schools were cast strapped, and Utah was kind
of one of them. I mean, they were going to
be running a deficit. Mark Carlin said that for the
next few years. I think they were in seventeen million
dollar deficit last year, and I know part of that
is to do with the Pac twelve and everything there,
So it's not like that it would be seventeen million
dollars every year. But at the same time, I think
a lot of schools needed to find a solution to
it and get more of a cash influx. And this
seems like it's going to bring in hundreds of million
dollars for Utah, So there is the inevitability of that.
But at the same time, like I think, there's real
questions about how if this is a good thing, if
this is where college athletics should be moving. I know
there's guardrails in place, and Utah has said there's guardrails
in place. But what actually happens when push comes to
show and the you know, Utah football is losing or
a basketball team is losing. What happens with the the
people in private equity who we've seen in every other
every other sector of where private equity fits like, it's
I don't know if you can expect that college football
will be completely different with college private equity than it was,
you know, I mean, look at our business with newspapers
right Like, I don't know if that's going to look
completely different just because it's college athletics and because there's
guardrails like do they have stay in coaching staff hires
or when you know, what does pricing look like for fans?
It's like, how does that change the fan experience? And
what does that look like? If it's not going well
like this? Are there kind of off ramps? And I
don't know if we have all the answers, and I
think but I do think there are serious questions to
be asked about all of this and what the future
looks like for Utah and then the other school that
goes goes into it, and we'll see. I mean, look
at Michigan, they've already said that they didn't. They did
not feel comfortable with this, So we'll see.
Speaker 2: Last thing, keV. Best way to support to you what
you do, how you do it. For all those that
are tuning in, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just go solid tribute and read read our stuff. We
really appreciate it and we'll have a lot of stuff
on all the stuff we're talking about now.
Speaker 2: Love it, Kevin, appreciate you man, Thanks for hopping on.
Great great comments, great segment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank man.
Speaker 1: There you go. That's Kevin RYANDLDS. Guys.
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