Sometime in the middle of 2018, before the start of another fall semester, BYU coach Kalani Sitake’s phone rang with a completely non-football-related question.
Weber State’s Jay Hill was on the other line, playing the part of a concerned father rather than a coach. His daughter, Ashtyn, was about to enroll at BYU and he wanted to see if Sitake could keep a watchful eye on his oldest.
Her work at BYUtv, which regularly features Sitake and his coaching staff, made the request easy enough.
“I got to see her a lot,” Sitake said.
What made it even easier?
“Jay and I have had this connection as friends for many years,” he said. ”The communication has always been there.”
That’s what made last week, as Sitake brought Hill on as his first associate head coach and defensive coordinator of the Big 12 era, so simple in the short term.
In the aftermath of longtime defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki’s departure from the program, there wasn’t some national, drawn-out search as there tends to be with these jobs. Instead, Sitake circled Hill as his main target from the jump and relied on the groundwork of nine years of friendship to get it done.
“Definitely,” Sitake would say of whether Hill was the top candidate.
They worked together at the University of Utah. They stayed in close contact when Hill was the head coach at Weber State for nine seasons. Their families knew each other.
The deal to bring Hill in was sealed in a matter of days. Once Weber State’s season ended on Sunday, Hill was signed and delivered by Wednesday morning.
“Was the thought there that we could work together at some point? Yeah, that has been there for the last nine years,” Hill said. “It has really been the last couple of days where things came together very quickly.”
But that is only part of the story.
A Big 12 step
(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Weber State football Head Coach Jay Hill during a practice at Stewart Stadium Wednesday, October 4, 2017.
Just because Hill and Sitake are close, and the deal came together quickly, doesn’t mean this was an easy hire. Not in the big picture at least, and not at BYU.
If this were two years ago, this hire likely wouldn’t have materialized. If it were five years ago, it would have been out of the question that someone like Hill would join the staff.
All of it comes back to the Big 12 and BYU’s newfound ability to lure in a coach with Hill’s resume.
Hill, for almost the last half-decade, fielded offers from different teams. Mountain West schools reportedly took a pass at him. Utah wanted to put him back on staff.
It got to the point in 2016, when Hill was going into homes to recruit, he would get asked if he would stay at Weber for the entire time kids were there.
“Every single year, you know he is getting phone calls from big-time jobs,” former receiver Ty MacPherson said.
That type of demand is expected for a coach who transformed the Ogden school into a perennial FCS power. Weber was ranked as high as No. 3 in the country in 2018 and went to six of the last seven FCS playoffs. It won four Big Sky titles. His defenses were among the best in the country and he was a proven recruiter.
Which is why, for a long time, BYU would have never had a chance to bring Hill on as a coordinator or assistant.
For one, it didn’t have the financial willpower before this. Hill was making around $200,000 in base salary at Weber and had a $100,000 buyout, according to the Ogden Standard-Examiner.
Now, BYU is paying Hill close to $1 million in salary, according to sources with knowledge of the figure. That far exceeds anything BYU has ever mustered for an assistant. It is the first major sign that athletic director Tom Holmoe is living up to his promise that Sitake will have “unprecedented” support in the Power Five.
“Going into the Big 12 Conference, it is about taking care of your program but also taking care of your players,” Sitake said of the salary bump for his assistant pool. “You have to do everything you can as a program to function. That means attracting high-level players and high-level coaches. Jay is a high-level coach.”
For a long time, too, BYU didn’t provide an enticing stepping stone that would pry Hill away from a good situation. The Big 12, Hill admitted, was worth it. But before, what was the draw?
“The fact that BYU is going to the Big 12, I think now is the best time,” MacPherson said of why he thinks Hill left Weber. “He is entering a job in a big-time, Power Five conference and can get BYU’s defense back on top. He has such an incredible resume.”
A challenge
Defensive Coordinator Jay Hill is introduced to the BYU Football team at a team meeting. (Jaren Wilkey/BYU)
On some Tuesdays in the Weber State practice facility, Hill would sub the normal conditioning workouts for five-on-five basketball games. Hill would play on one team, the rest of the guys would rotate in.
“He is competitive in everything,” said Brady May, a former player turned graduate assistant under Hill.
It would translate to golf, where he would take players out to the Ogden Country Club. Or the pickleball court, where he often egged on his own players during games.
In a big way, though, his yearning for a challenge is what brought him to being BYU’s defensive coordinator in the Big 12.
“That was one of the things so intriguing to me about coming here,” Hill said.
He is inheriting a defense that was the worst in Sitake’s tenure by a wide margin, ranked 93rd in defense. He is also making the jump from the FCS to the Power Five, a step up in competition that is difficult to manage.
He was at Utah when that program made the jump to the Power Five.
Now Hill hopes to take that experience as he mans the controls himself, looking to bolster a struggling defense and stabilize an incoming recruiting class that might be wary of some of the changes BYU made as it overhauls its staff.
“Jay Hill is a great hire and I know he will have a good impact,” BYU recruit Pierson Watson said. “When he was at Weber State I received an offer from him as well so I already have a connection with him.”
Hill doesn’t appear to be daunted by the task in front of him. When he talked about this move, he mentioned how he grew up in Lehi and was a BYU basketball fan with his father. He had BYU posters in his room. He mentioned finding excitement in what is ahead and being surrounded by people he hoped to work with, Sitake chief among them.
And now all there is left to do is team up with Sitake and go on home visits recruiting, just as they did as assistants at Utah. It is a vision they always wanted, thought maybe wouldn’t happen, but now is finally materializing.
