BYU is suffering from a collision of ideas, of ideology, of world thought versus heavenly thought, like a head-on on a lonely stretch of county two-lane. And the debris is scattered in bits and pieces all around.
On the one hand, the school is clamping down on its professors, coaches, and other employees, requiring those who work at the school — and, in some cases, students who study there — not just to live to a very particular religious standard, but to eat it, breathe it, think it, accept it, never question it, never express anything counter to it, never step outside the mental and spiritual and behavioral box erected around them.
Maybe that expectation is claimed to be for their own good, but it’s definitely for the good of those who run the school, for the good of champions of religious orthodoxy who use some superior level of compliance as a measure of faith and means to control folks who work at or attend BYU. In the case of professors, coaches and employees, that level goes beyond what is expected of regular ol’ members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even worshippers who qualify for temple attendance by answering interview questions put forth by ecclesiastical leaders in an acceptable manner.
Those who work at BYU adhere to those heightened expectations or …
Or else.
That’s the Buick hurtling down one side of the highway. It’s the vehicular equivalent of living in the world, but not of it, a manifestation of hyper-commitment to the spiritual, to that very specific brand of spirituality. It’s gospel done not just the Latter-day Saint way, but the BYU way, a more celestial, covenant-path-y way.
The Kia hurtling down the other side, straight toward that Buick, is revving and running not just in the world, but completely of it, too. BYU sports is soaked and saturated in and of it.
That’s manifested by the salaries the school is now paying its coaches, especially in the money sports — football and basketball. Not only that, but the money that’s being funneled toward athletes, NIL cash that is being handed out in record numbers.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Prep Academy’s AJ Dybantsa, a star basketball player and potential BYU commit, plays in the 5 for the Fight National Hoopfest in Pleasant Grove on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024.
AJ Dybantsa, the country’s — no, the world’s — No. 1 high school basketball recruit, recently so famously announced that he will be attending BYU. How did that happen? Well. It wasn’t because the ultra-talented forward was eager to attend Book of Mormon and church history classes at the school. Dybantsa flat said it. He’s coming to BYU because of coach Kevin Young’s ties to the NBA, and the projected manner in which Young and his extended staff can prepare the kid for his presumed spot as the NBA’s top pick in the 2026 draft. He doesn’t care about a college degree, and he doesn’t care about immersing himself in Latter-day Saint teachings and doctrines.
He’ll play one year at BYU, spending what amounts to about five months on campus, before bolting to the pros. And the payout to him for his stopover in Provo has been reported to be somewhere between $5 and $7 million. That caught the attention of basketball observers and fans from coast to coast.
Breaking news: It had nothing to do with religion.
Other high-profile basketball and football athletes also are coming to BYU. Is it for the brotherhood or for the big bucks?
You can make that call.
Clark Gilbert, the church’s zealous education boss who many unhappy professors and other employees at BYU blame for the school’s recent clampdown, in October told Dave McCann and Blaine Fowler on their podcast that the church wouldn’t stray from its core principles.
“… If it ever came down to the only way to stay in this is to walk away from our values, that would be the end of athletics at BYU,” he said.
He also said it is top church leadership that’s in control at BYU, not athletic director Tom Holmoe, not coaches, not boosters and donors.
He added, rather paradoxically, that “the church isn’t going to weigh in on dollar amounts or recruits, that’s the job of the university. But we will lay out some principles. We can never become a place where the culture is pay to play. We would undermine everything at BYU if that wins out.”
Umm …
Quibbling over the definition of terms when it comes to paying for play is nothing more than exactly that — quibbling. The truth is that talented athletes at BYU and those who will eventually arrive there are and will be getting paid. Gilbert said BYU “will remain anchored in the Honor Code.” Saying the sports culture at the school is wholly outside paying to play would be … let’s see, what would it be? … an Honor Code violation.
It would be a boatload of hypocrisy, too.
Perhaps some folks don’t see BYU’s new emphasis on religious rigidity — you can read about that in Tribune religion writer Peggy Fletcher Stack’s in-depth piece on “Dark Days” at BYU and in my previous column on that topic — and BYU’s immersion in funneling so much filthy lucre to coaches and players as a head-on collision. Maybe they’d see it more as a car sideswipe.
Either way, it’s an interesting juxtaposition. BYU proclaiming its righteousness to outsiders as it puts the hammer to its academics on the inside, all while the school, owned and operated by a church whose assets number nearly $300 billion, is outbidding others for star athletes and coaches for their services.
If BYU wants to pretend that it’s in the world not of it, while its sports ventures are very much of it, so be it. But the debris from that smashup is, indeed, here, there, everywhere.
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