Waco, Texas • The red practice squad jersey hanging from Crew Wakley’s locker looked so out of place that he thought it had to be a mistake.

It was the fall of 2021 and the Jordan High product was playing well in Utah State’s training camp. Then-defensive coordinator Ephraim Banda had just told him he’d play nickel in the season opener, Wakley said.

So he figured that practice squad jersey must have just been an error by an overworked equipment manager.

“I don’t even put it on,” Wakley remembered. “And then I get to the field and it’s, ‘Where’s your jersey?’”

Wakley said he pulled Banda aside and asked what had changed in the 48 hours since they’d last spoke. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, there must be some miscommunication,’” Wakley recalled.

“So from that point on, I was like, ‘This is nuts,’” he said. “When a coach isn’t honest with you, there’s not much else you can do.”

That exchange set off a three-year chain reaction that led to Wakley celebrating as a hero of BYU’s win over Baylor last weekend.

Wakley transferred from USU, quit football altogether to sell solar panels in California, walked on again at BYU and then finally worked his way back to steal a game-sealing interception against the Bears. The ball-magnet safety has been a key part a defense that has the Cougars in the heart of the College Football Playoff chase and now 5-0 heading into October.

Selling solar

Wakley’s best trait — the unwavering self-confidence — sometimes comes with faults. And the practice squad season showed it.

That year, Wakley played alongside future Utah State star Ike Larsen and BYU linebacker Sione Moa. But Wakley didn’t think he belonged there. He was ready to contribute now.

“I didn’t have the best attitude about it by any means,” Wakley said. “I’m not going to lie. I was not a very good scout team player.”

He poked around at his options when the season ended. He reached out to BYU to see if it had any openings. Wide receivers coach Fesi Sitake recruited him out of high school to play at Weber State. But the Cougars didn’t have a spot for him.

“He was really defeated for a while. It was weighing on him,” his wife Kimber Wakley said.

He asked Kimber if he should quit football and sell solar panels with her brother-in-law in California.

“It was either be miserable, or go make some money,” Wakley said.

So before spring camp started, he packed his bags and went to California. He said Fresno was the dreariest place he’d been — “You seen the movie ‘McFarland, [USA]’? That’s it. There’s nothing for miles.” — but he believed he was more than a red jersey.

When he got there, he built a marketing team from scratch. He knocked on doors from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., convincing farmers that he wasn’t scamming them.

“It was brutal,” he said. “They thought it was a pyramid scheme. I’m like, ‘No, I’m selling a product and we’ll pay you.’ It was such a foreign concept.”

Maybe the move shouldn’t have been a shock. Wakley made a career out of making decisions others might advise against.

When he was at Jordan High School, Wakley was a quarterback competing with future BYU star and NFL draft pick Zach Wilson.

By most accounts, Wakley should’ve been the one to change positions and transfer.

Instead, he stayed put and won the job. He simply thought he was better than Wilson.

Wakley turned himself into the state’s best playmaker. He threw for over 3,500 yards and ran for over 1,000 more.

“I’ve never been given anything,” he said.

But he made it work. By September, his brother had returned from an LDS mission and was preparing to play at Utah Tech. Wakley thought he could give football a final shot. But this time, he was going to the Power Four, where he thought he belonged.

He texted Sitake again, asking to walk on at BYU. New defensive coordinator Jay Hill signed off.

“I’ll be honest, at first I was like, ‘We’ve had so many switches,’” Kimber said. “I wanted a path. I wanted to know what our plan was. I’m like, if you go back and you’re going to choose to do this, we’re going all in. Like, there are no distractions. Because when we were at Utah State, he was having that struggle. Torn between, I can make money or I can stay at football where I’m not happy.’”

Wakley was back in Utah working out two weeks later. This time, he thought, he was going to be a Big 12 starter.

Going without a scholarship

When Wakley came out of fall camp this year, BYU still had its reservations.

Wakley finished as BYU’s fifth-leading tackler in 2023. He had an interception against Texas and made his first start against Arkansas.

But Hill didn’t put him on scholarship. He didn’t put him on the depth chart; Wakley was listed as the fourth string behind a bevy of freshmen.

“It is a hard decision because we are over scholarships right now,” Hill told The Salt Lake Tribune, noting there are nine scholarships in the safety room when there should be around seven. “I’ve done everything I can to balance out who is on scholarship. He deserves to be on scholarship. But with numbers, it’s just been hard.”

Wakley can live with Hill’s response.

“He’s always told me the truth. Even if I didn’t like it. So I can respect that,” he said. “In the most respectful way, I think if you combine what I did last season with the change I had in my body this offseason, I think I’ve definitely earned the right to compete for the spot.”

And by the second week of the year, Wakley was BYU’s top safety again — maybe one of its best players. He had five tackles against SMU. And then on the road against Baylor, with the game in the balance, Hill dialed up a coverage for Wakley to save the game.

He was playing two-high safeties, and the route funneled to Wakley to grab the interception with a minute to play. It sealed BYU’s 34-28 win and its 5-0 start to the year.

“That’s Hitman Crew,” defensive end Tyler Batty said.

It’s a vision few believed in. But Wakley believed, steadfastly so, that all he needed was a moment, a stage, to show what he could do — it was just a matter of who would give it to him.

“It wasn’t like he wasn’t talented,” Kimber said. “It was that we weren’t in the right place at the right time.”

Those stars are aligned now.

“I can’t even get on the depth chart at a Mountain West school, and I’m starting in the Big 12,” Wakley said, shaking his head. “No kidding.”

“Nothing was given to me, and it still never is,” Wakley added.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.