Inside BYU’s unique surge to the top of college football

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The sun hadn’t yet risen over the Wasatch Range when Kalani Sitake decided to bust a move.

Standing alongside Cosmo, the Brigham Young University mascot, the head football coach shimmied and shook ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew to commercial break, mixing steps from his native Tongan ritual dances with straight-up club vibing.

On the other side of daylight, Sitake and his BYU football team would welcome No. 2 Notre Dame for arguably the biggest home game on campus in two decades. The Cougars are no beggars at the football feast. Jumpstarted by LaVell Edwards, the true father of the air raid offense, BYU has maintained national relevance through various conference iterations and even a dalliance with independence.

But this was the Irish and all their golden-helmeted luster finding their way to Provo, Utah, for the first time since 2004, the enormity of their visit underscored by the pregame show luring people out before dawn.

Yet with every eyeball trained on him and his team, there was Sitake, dancing like nobody was watching. The surprise samba left even hard-to-impress Nick Saban, whose rug cutting is limited to boot leg Cupid Shuffle videos on recruiting visits, near speechless.

“My hat’s off to you,” Saban said. “You’re up here dancing before a game. I was so nervous before a big game, I couldn’t even spit.”

Everything the Cougars are doing these days seems to spit in the eye of convention. Owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a church that counts self-reliance and not spending more than it has among its core principles, BYU beat the Irish and currently is ranked No. 2 in the nation in an era of unchecked spending.

Required to follow the church’s strict honor code that prohibits premarital sex, alcohol, tobacco, coffee and cursing, talented athletes are not just choosing BYU, they are opting to stay while elsewhere players are entering the transfer portal at the slightest hint of struggle. And, at a school, where 98% of the undergraduate population is Mormon and diversity is largely geography based, the Cougars are led by a quarterback who is Catholic-raised and the son of a Thai mother who named him Bear who, upon beating Notre Dame said, “We put our balls on the chopping block.”

Yet asked to explain how BYU is getting over its host of limitations, those who work at, or have long been affiliated with, the school suggest people are looking at it all wrong. BYU’s uniqueness isn’t its downfall, they argue; having an uncompromising identity is, in fact, its strength.

“In some ways, because of the realities of being a religious institution with firm beliefs and principles in the wild west of NIL, we have a clearer vision of what we can and can’t do and who we are,” said three-time Super Bowl champion Steve Young, a 1984 graduate of BYU. “In a sort of frictionless system, it’s about, who are you willing to be? We’re willing to be something unique. The complexity is really the beauty of it.”

Ryan Smith first started going to BYU games when he was still in diapers. His father, Scott, was a marketing research professor at the school and home football Saturdays in Provo weren’t optional.

“It’s just what you did,” he told CNN Sports.

Midway through his own undergrad career at BYU, Smith left school to join his father, who’d happened upon a startup concept involving a way to make sophisticated research more user friendly. As he was readying to launch Qualtrics, Scott Smith was diagnosed with throat cancer, so Ryan joined to help him see the project to fruition.

In 2018, a German company bought Qualtrics for $8 billion. Smith has since bought the NBA’s Utah Jazz, relocated the Arizona Coyotes and turned them into Utah’s first NHL franchise, the Mammoth. He’s involved with Salt Lake’s MLS franchise and helped the city land the 2034 Winter Olympics. On Saturday, he tossed in an extra million bucks to sweeten the pot for the student kicker on “GameDay.”

Smith is, in so many ways, the new face of BYU: a backward-ballcap-wearing dude who just so happens to rank No. 1,285 on Forbes’ list of billionaires. He is rich beyond measure, but a church member who believes fervently in its principles – actual proof that money and Mormonism do not have to be at odds.

Which is the essential push/pull here. BYU long has viewed athletics as an integral part of its mission, intuitively understanding that a school that is constantly fighting misconceptions and stereotypes desperately needs the very American front porch of sports.

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“It opens a door to understand and learn who BYU is,” BYU president C. Shane Reese told CNN Sports. “A lot of people have not been to BYU or know anything about it. Football gives you a peek into who we are.”

But the shift in college athletics has required an internal reconciling that is even more challenging than the external education.

BYU at once wants to stay in line with its competition but doesn’t want to compromise who it is. Essentially, it wants to walk the impossible line between adhering to the staunch principle of tithing while simultaneously paying athletes millions to toss a ball around.

“The most common question I get asked is, ‘What keeps you up at night?’” Reese said. “For sure I would say it’s the worry about us losing sight of who we are as an institution. Our strength is our distinctiveness. If you’re always trying to become someone else, you’re likely going to lose that. I don’t think that what we hope is a great run in college football is going to change us but we have to be deliberate in saying, ‘This is who we are.’”

Reese is something of a nontraditionalist himself. Before getting his “geek on,” and discovering a love for statistics, he fronted a punk rock band called Joe’s Wish. Reese jokes that the fact that it was a punk rock band only proves that he couldn’t sing.

But it also means he appreciates the need to branch out, even if he finds solace in order. Before becoming a professor at BYU, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he considered the readiness of the nation’s nuclear stockpile. As an academic, he studied everything from locating bowhead whale mating grounds to NASCAR. For a time, he even worked in sports analytics, helping fellow BYU alum Andy Reid when Reid was with the Eagles.

All that to say the man understands numbers. Reese’s first day on the presidency job was on May 1, 2023; two months later, after 12 years as an independent, the Cougars joined the Big 12.

In the three years since, the athletic departments revenues have skyrocketed from $47 million to $153 million. While the estimated $20 million spent on the football roster, according to The Athletic, pales in comparison to the some $50 million at Ohio State and Texas, it is not exactly chump change either. The statistician president understands the fiscal demands to remaining competitive, and the institutional benefits of being good at sports.

But as university president, it is Reese’s job to make sure that, while everyone else around the country is playing with Monopoly money and accruing debt, BYU somehow minds its bottom line.

The school is very clear about the church’s role in NIL. Quite simply, it has none.

Yet the church also expects that both the institution and the athletic department remain debt-free. That’s the tug. There are other schools guided by religion – Notre Dame and Villanova are about to enjoy an audience with the Pope after playing in men’s and women’s basketball in Rome next month – but none is technically governed by its church. BYU’s board is chaired by the president of the church, who is also considered the church’s prophet, and members of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are also BYU board members.

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The church’s expectation to live debt-free is not just an ask; it’s a requirement.

“We absolutely have some reasonable guardrails in place,” Reese said. “Not assuming debt is tied to our sponsorship to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. That is a principle they operate under. So, we might not have the shiniest buildings or maybe the doors squeak a bit on occasion, but those guardrails – we don’t take funds from the church, and we don’t assume debt as an athletic department – have served us well and they’re not going away.”

School officials will be the first to admit that not everyone agrees. BYU has some half a million living alumni. Most are content for the school to live within the means it has long existed under, but there are plenty who have enjoyed the taste of success and would like administrators to push a few more chips to the center.

The school, after all, is not merely trying to be a viable independent; it is trying to be a Power 4 contender, with all the benefits that includes.

“There are certainly some who feel like, if we’re going to be successful, we have to embrace what others are doing, and go with a more professional model,” says Keith Vorkink, BYU’s vice president of advancement. “But that’s not a tension we feel most of the time. You have to have some professional aspects. We’re not ignorant of that, but the key is do it in a way that aligns with our mission.”

There is money in the Wasatch. Along with Smith, two other graduates – Mark Hancock (he’s No. 1,755 on Forbes) and Jason Murray – just agreed to a partnership between their alma mater and their company, PV3, to help fund NIL and facilities. Though the particulars weren’t disclosed, the school said it is the largest philanthropic donation to BYU athletics in school history.

And then there is Jason McGowan, the mere megamillionaire owner of Crumbl Cookies, who could be a BYU savior. Last year, Penn State made a serious play for Sitake after canning James Franklin, offering well more than the $4 million BYU had been paying him.

“Some people are not replaceable,” McGowan posted on X. “Sounds like it’s time for me to get off the sidelines and get to work.”

A day later, Sitake signed an extension reportedly worth $9 million annually.

But as critical as donor funding is, those who are providing the funds believe their wallets are not the path for sustainable BYU excellence. Instead, they look to the essence of the school – even with, or maybe because of, all of its idiosyncrasies – as its best value add. Smith sits on the NBA media committee and meets regularly with the people relocating to Utah amid a business boon.

He studies the stuff not merely as a BYU fan, but as a businessman.

“TV is driving the money in college sports,” he said. “What the Big Ten schools get annually through its TV contracts, you can’t get that through individual donors. The product has to be marketable. The schools ultimately that sit atop the rankings, the ones with name recognition, they’re going to be the most valuable.”

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The trick, then, is making your product marketable. Some 6.9 million church members live in the US, and while not all of them are football fans, plenty appreciate seeing the Cougars amplify their religion. “GameDay” enjoyed its third-best rating in show history on Saturday and at its peak, the Cougars game against Notre Dame drew 9.2 million viewers, the highest for a Big 12 team since 2022.

“BYU draws,” Smith said. “That’s the part no one understands.”

The vicious cycle of the current model, of course, is that to become marketable a team needs to get and retain good players, and to do that a school has to spend money, which cycles the whole thing back to the start. That means players have to be paid, and paid handsomely, which – in turn – runs against the very ethos of BYU.

It feels like an impossible riddle to solve. BYU, though, thinks it has the solution.

“You’ve got what seems like these competing interests,” Young says. “In the one hand you’re holding tight to the fact that we’re in the Big 12 and we have to be committed to the excellence of that. On the other hand, how do you build something that is so resonant to people that they would not actually just go take the last dollar? How do you get them stay for something more than the transaction, or build something that is not purely transactional? We call that the Kalani law of love.”

LaVell Edwards is something like the Joseph Smith of BYU football, both the founding father and the man who established the roadmap for the program’s success.

Given the freedom to build something far away from the confines of Top 10 football, he engineered a pass-first offense during a time when most coaches still preferred the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust approach. Beginning in 1972, the year Edwards was promoted to head coach, 11 consecutive running backs won the Heisman Trophy. Meanwhile in Provo, BYU gunslingers, beginning with Gary Sheide, were throwing for thousands of yards every season.

A member of the church himself, Edwards leaned into, rather than obfuscated, its mission. He purposefully sought church members, crafting what would be termed the Polynesian pipeline by capitalizing on the heavy population of LDS members in places such as Tonga and Samoa. And after years at balking at holding scholarships for players who served their two-year missions, Edwards came around to understanding it was a way to get and keep his team older.

Yet he also welcomed those who craved the school’s structure, if not its religion. Troublemaker Jim McMahon headed to BYU in no small part because his parents wanted him to find a little discipline.

Twenty-six years after Edwards retired, one of his own is following his principles nearly to a T. Sitake came via the end around of the Polynesian pipeline. Born in Tonga, he was raised in Hawaii and schooled in Missouri. A fullback at BYU, he wound up team captain in his senior season.

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Young, who played for Edwards and has attended Sitake’s practices, is stunned at how similar they are. Sitake winds up practice with a prayer and insists that the defense and offense shake hands after going at one another all day.

“We’re talking about love in football,” Young said. “It’s like saying, ‘There’s no crying in baseball.’ There’s no love in football, right? Well, yes there is. LaVell was all of that and Kalani is all of that.”

Yet Sitake is entirely his own man. A bubble of happiness in a profession largely inhabited by the morose, he takes his job seriously, if not himself. He has, in various victory celebrations, done the cabbage patch and robot, and cracks jokes about both his affinity for ice cream and his fullback frame.

His life has not been all jokes. Raised by a single father, he used to sit outside the BYU stadium and listen to games on the radio, the tickets too expensive for his family to afford. He spent one year at BYU before serving his mission in Oakland, California, returning to the Cougars as a redshirt before finally earning his way onto the field.

Sitake also has a really hard job, no matter how much joy he brings to it. He is being asked to attract football players to a campus where they must operate under strict social guidelines with zero wiggle room for error.

“It’s really hard what he’s doing,” Young said, “but he makes it look so easy.”

Though 66 players on the current roster have served their mission, you cannot construct a roster entirely with LDS kids.

Bringing non-church members to Provo requires a very different leap of faith. The school has worked hard to knock down the bogeyman perceptions.

“We didn’t bring AJ here with the sole intent of converting him to our faith,” said Vorkink of No. 1 NBA draft pick AJ Dybantsa, who spent one season in Provo before leaving for the pros. “We have dozens of student-athletes who are not of our faith and feel like they belong in our community as much as anyone else.”

Some have posited that the very thing that outsiders think makes BYU a hard sell – the lack of the normal college rites of passage – might be its best sales pitch. Smith, who spends hours signing and searching for professional basketball and hockey players, has noticed a slight shift in their mindsets.

“It’s not the old frat boy college stereotype anymore,” he said. “Parents who want their kids to play at the next level, they want a place where you can keep the main thing the main thing. That’s what (BYU) offers.”

But it has to be more than that. At the end of last season, BYU lost 13 players to the transfer portal; none were projected as starters for this season.

“We are thriving in a Wild West situation,” Young said, “because Kalani is that special.”

He added, “For some people, I know, this is ‘Oh my gosh! What is happening over there? It’s like magic.’ It’s like people think this will pass or something, but what we want people to understand is this is what we’ve been doing. It’s not new news. We’ve been hovering around 23,000 feet at base camp. Now we’re ready to summit Mount Everest.”

克里斯·加德纳/盖蒂图片社

当太阳还没升起在瓦萨奇山脉上时，卡拉尼·西塔克就决定跳起舞来。

这位橄榄球主教练站在杨百翰大学吉祥物 Cosmo 旁边，扭动着身子，摇晃着 ESPN 的“大学比赛日”节目组，直到广告时间结束。他的舞步融合了家乡汤加的仪式舞蹈和纯粹的夜店氛围。

黎明时分，西塔克和他的杨百翰大学橄榄球队将迎战排名第二的圣母大学，这场比赛堪称近二十年来校园里最重要的一场主场比赛。杨百翰大学在橄榄球盛宴上绝非等闲之辈。在空袭战术之父拉维尔·爱德华兹的带领下，杨百翰大学历经多次联盟更迭，甚至一度尝试独立，始终保持着全国性的竞争力。

但这是爱尔兰队，他们头戴金色头盔，光芒四射，自 2004 年以来首次来到犹他州普罗沃，赛前表演更是吸引了人们在黎明前就来到现场，凸显了他们此次访问的盛况。

然而，当所有人的目光都聚焦在他和他的团队身上时，西塔克却像无人观看一般翩翩起舞。这出人意料的桑巴舞甚至让向来挑剔的尼克·萨班都惊叹不已，要知道，萨班的舞技仅限于在招募考察时偷偷跳一段“丘比特舞步”的视频。

“我真佩服你，”萨班说。“你赛前居然在台上跳舞。我以前打重要比赛前紧张得连口水都吐不出来。”

杨百翰大学美洲狮队如今的所作所为似乎都在挑战传统观念。这所大学由耶稣基督后期圣徒教会拥有和运营，而该教会的核心原则之一是自力更生，量入为出。在如今这个挥霍无度的时代，杨百翰大学美洲狮队击败了爱尔兰队，目前在全美排名第二。

由于教会严格的荣誉准则禁止婚前性行为、饮酒、吸烟、喝咖啡和说脏话，才华横溢的运动员们不仅选择杨百翰大学，而且选择留在这里，而其他学校的球员只要遇到一点点困难就会转学。在这所大学里，98%的本科生都是摩门教徒，多元化主要体现在地域分布上，而美洲狮队的四分卫却是一位天主教徒，他的母亲是泰国人，给他取名为“熊”。在击败圣母大学后，他说：“我们把命悬一线。”

然而，当被问及杨百翰大学如何克服其诸多局限时，那些在该校工作或长期与之有联系的人士却认为人们的看法完全错误。他们认为，杨百翰大学的独特性并非其弱点；事实上，坚持自我正是其优势所在。

“在某种程度上，正因为我们是一所宗教机构，在NIL（姓名、形象和肖像权）这个鱼龙混杂的领域中，拥有坚定的信仰和原则，我们才对自身的定位和能力有了更清晰的认识，”三届超级碗冠军得主、1984年毕业于杨百翰大学的史蒂夫·杨说道。“在一个相对顺畅的体系中，关键在于你愿意成为什么样的人？我们愿意成为独一无二的存在。而这种复杂性，恰恰是它的魅力所在。”

瑞安·史密斯还在襁褓之中时就开始去看杨百翰大学的比赛了。他的父亲斯科特是该校的市场营销研究教授，所以每个周六在普罗沃举行的主场橄榄球赛都是不容错过的。

“这就是你所做的，”他告诉 CNN 体育频道。

在杨百翰大学读本科中途，史密斯辍学加入父亲的创业项目。他父亲偶然萌生了一个创业想法，旨在让复杂的科研工作更加便捷易用。正当斯科特·史密斯准备推出Qualtrics时，他被诊断出喉癌，于是瑞恩加入公司，帮助父亲完成这个项目。

2018年，一家德国公司以80亿美元收购了Qualtrics。此后，史密斯收购了NBA犹他爵士队，将亚利桑那郊狼队迁至犹他州，并将其打造成为犹他州第一支NHL球队——猛犸队。他还参与了盐湖城MLS球队的运营，并帮助该市申办了2034年冬季奥运会。上周六，他又额外捐赠了100万美元，为“GameDay”节目中那位学生踢球手的比赛增添奖金。

从很多方面来看，史密斯都是杨百翰大学的新面孔：一个反戴棒球帽的家伙，恰好在福布斯亿万富翁排行榜上名列第1285位。他富可敌国，却是一位虔诚的教会成员，对教会的教义无比笃信——这恰恰证明了金钱和摩门教信仰并非水火不容。

这就是问题的关键所在。杨百翰大学长期以来一直将体育运动视为其使命不可或缺的一部分，它敏锐地意识到，一所不断与误解和刻板印象作斗争的学校，迫切需要体育运动这种极具美国特色的“门面”。

博伊德·艾维/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

“这为了解和认识杨百翰大学打开了一扇门，”杨百翰大学校长C·肖恩·里斯告诉CNN体育频道。“很多人没上过杨百翰大学，或者对它一无所知。橄榄球能让你一窥我们的面貌。”

但大学体育的转变需要进行内部协调，这比外部教育更具挑战性。

杨百翰大学既想与竞争对手保持一致，又不想改变自身的特色。本质上，它想在坚守什一奉献原则的同时，又花数百万美元雇佣运动员打球，这几乎是不可能完成的任务。

“我被问到最多的问题是，‘什么事让你夜不能寐？’”里斯说道。“我肯定会说，最担心的是我们作为一所机构会迷失自我。我们的优势在于我们的独特性。如果你总是试图成为别人，你很可能会失去这种独特性。我不认为我们希望在大学橄榄球赛场上取得辉煌战绩会改变我们，但我们必须坚定地表明，‘这就是我们。’”

里斯本人也算是个非传统主义者。在成为“书呆子”并爱上统计学之前，他曾是朋克摇滚乐队“乔的愿望”（Joe's Wish）的主唱。里斯开玩笑说，他组建朋克摇滚乐队这件事恰恰证明了他根本不会唱歌。

但这同时也意味着他明白拓展视野的必要性，即便他从秩序中找到慰藉。在成为杨百翰大学教授之前，他曾在洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室工作，负责评估国家核武库的战备状态。作为一名学者，他的研究领域包罗万象，从寻找弓头鲸的交配地到纳斯卡赛车，无所不包。他还曾从事体育数据分析工作，协助杨百翰大学校友安迪·里德（Andy Reid）在费城老鹰队执教。

总而言之，这个人很懂数字。里斯于2023年5月1日正式就任校长；两个月后，在作为独立球队征战12年后，美洲狮队加入了十大联盟。

三年后，体育部门的收入从4700万美元飙升至1.53亿美元。据《The Athletic》报道，该校在橄榄球队上的花费约为2000万美元，虽然与俄亥俄州立大学和德克萨斯大学约5000万美元的支出相比相形见绌，但也绝非小数目。这位精通统计学的校长深知保持竞争力所需的财政投入，以及体育强校对学校的益处。

但作为大学校长，里斯的职责是确保当全国其他大学都在玩“大富翁”游戏、积累债务时，杨百翰大学能够顾及自身的财务状况。

学校对教会参与NIL（无歧视法）的立场非常明确。简而言之，教会没有任何参与。

然而，教会也希望学校和体育部门都能保持零负债。这就是其中的矛盾所在。还有其他一些受宗教影响的学校——圣母大学和维拉诺瓦大学下个月将在罗马参加男女篮球比赛，之后将觐见教皇——但没有哪所学校在法律上是由教会直接管理的。杨百翰大学的董事会主席是教会的会长，他也被认为是教会的先知，而教会十二使徒定额组的成员也是杨百翰大学的董事会成员。

乔治·弗雷/盖蒂图片社

教会期望信徒过上无债一身轻的生活，这不仅是要求，更是必须的。

“我们确实制定了一些合理的保障措施，”里斯说。“不承担债务与我们对耶稣基督后期圣徒教会的赞助息息相关。这是他们奉行的原则。所以，我们的建筑可能不是最光鲜亮丽的，或者偶尔门会吱吱作响，但这些保障措施——我们不接受教会的资金，体育部门也不承担债务——一直对我们很有帮助，而且这些措施不会取消。”

校方官员会首先承认，并非所有人都赞同这一做法。杨百翰大学拥有约五十万在世校友。大多数校友都乐于看到学校维持现有的经费规模，但也有不少校友曾享受过成功的滋味，希望校方能加大投入。

毕竟，这所学校的目标不仅仅是成为一所能够独立生存的学校；它还想成为四大联盟的有力竞争者，并获得随之而来的所有好处。

“当然，有些人认为，如果我们想要成功，就必须接受其他人的做法，采用更专业的模式，”杨百翰大学发展副校长基思·沃金克说道。“但我们大多数时候并不感到这种矛盾。你必须具备一些专业性。我们并非不了解这一点，但关键在于如何以符合我们使命的方式去做。”

瓦萨奇地区财力雄厚。除了史密斯之外，另外两位毕业生——马克·汉考克（他在福布斯富豪榜上排名第1755位）和杰森·默里——刚刚达成一项合作协议，他们的母校和他们的公司PV3将共同资助NIL（姓名、形象和肖像权）项目以及相关设施的建设。虽然具体细节尚未披露，但学校表示，这是杨百翰大学体育部历史上收到的最大一笔慈善捐款。

还有一位名叫杰森·麦克高恩（Jason McGowan）的亿万富翁，他是Crumbl Cookies的老板，或许能成为杨百翰大学的救星。去年，宾夕法尼亚州立大学在解雇詹姆斯·富兰克林（James Franklin）后，曾认真考虑过聘请西塔克（Sitake），开出的薪水远高于杨百翰大学支付给他的400万美元。

麦克高恩在X上发帖说：“有些人是不可替代的。看来我该不再袖手旁观，开始工作了。”

一天后，西塔克签署了一份据报道年薪 900 万美元的续约合同。

但尽管捐赠资金至关重要，但捐赠者们认为，他们的钱包并非杨百翰大学持续卓越的途径。相反，他们认为学校的本质——即便它拥有（或者正是因为）各种特质——才是其最大的价值所在。史密斯是NBA媒体委员会的成员，他定期与那些因商业繁荣而迁居犹他州的人们会面。

他研究这些东西，不仅仅是作为一名杨百翰大学的球迷，更是作为一名商人。

“电视转播才是大学体育资金的主要来源，”他说。“十大联盟的学校每年通过电视转播合同获得的收入，是个人捐赠者无法企及的。比赛内容必须有市场价值。最终，那些排名靠前、知名度高的学校，它们的价值也会最高。”

Aaron Baker/Icon Sportswire/美联社

因此，关键在于如何让你的产品具有市场竞争力。美国约有690万教会成员，虽然他们并非都是橄榄球迷，但很多人都乐于看到美洲狮队（Cougars）的比赛能提升他们的宗教影响力。“GameDay”节目周六的收视率创下历史第三高，而美洲狮队对阵圣母大学的比赛更是吸引了920万观众，创下自2022年以来十大联盟（Big 12）球队的最高收视纪录。

“杨百翰大学的比赛很吸引人，”史密斯说。“这是没人能理解的地方。”

当然，当前模式的恶性循环在于，球队要想具备市场竞争力，就需要招募并留住优秀球员，而学校为了做到这一点就必须投入资金，这又使一切回到了原点。这意味着球员必须获得报酬，而且是丰厚的报酬，而这反过来又与杨百翰大学的办学理念背道而驰。

这感觉像是一个无法解开的谜题。不过，杨百翰大学认为他们找到了答案。

“你面临着看似相互冲突的利益，”杨说道。“一方面，我们身处十大联盟，必须致力于追求卓越。另一方面，如何打造一个能引起人们共鸣的东西，让他们不仅仅是为了钱而离开？如何让他们留下来，不仅仅是为了交易，或者说，如何打造一个不纯粹是交易的东西？我们称之为卡拉尼爱的法则。”

拉维尔·爱德华兹之于杨百翰大学橄榄球队，就像约瑟夫·史密斯之于杨百翰大学橄榄球队一样，既是创始人，也是为该项目的成功制定路线图的人。

摆脱了十大联盟橄榄球的束缚，拥有了自由打造球队的权力，他在大多数教练仍然偏爱三码推进、扬起尘土的进攻方式的年代，设计了一套以传球为主的进攻体系。从1972年爱德华兹升任主教练开始，连续11位跑卫荣膺海斯曼奖。与此同时，在普罗沃，杨百翰大学的四分卫们，从加里·谢德开始，每个赛季都能传出数千码的成绩。

作为教会成员，爱德华兹积极践行而非回避教会的使命。他有意识地寻找教会成员，利用汤加和萨摩亚等地摩门教徒众多的人口，打造了所谓的“波利尼西亚人才输送管道”。多年来，爱德华兹一直不愿为完成两年传教的球员提供奖学金，但最终他意识到，这其实是让球队保持成熟阵容的一种方式。

然而，他也欢迎那些渴望学校规章制度而非宗教信仰的人。问题少年吉姆·麦克马洪之所以选择杨百翰大学，很大程度上是因为他的父母希望他能接受一些管教。

爱德华兹退休26年后，他的一位弟子几乎完全遵循着他的原则。西塔克是通过波利尼西亚移民管道来到美国的。他出生于汤加，在夏威夷长大，在密苏里州接受教育。作为杨百翰大学的后卫，他在大四赛季担任了球队队长。

Andrew Wevers/Getty Images

乔纳森·丹尼尔/Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

曾效力于爱德华兹队并旁听过西塔克训练的杨，惊讶于两人的相似之处。西塔克会在训练结束时带领大家祈祷，并坚持让防守队员和进攻队员在对抗了一整天后握手致意。

“我们谈论的是足球中的爱，”杨说道。“这就好比说，‘棒球场上没有眼泪。’足球里就没有爱，对吧？不，足球里有。拉维尔身上就体现了这一切，卡拉尼身上也体现了这一切。”

然而，西塔克完全是个特立独行的人。在这个大多愁眉苦脸的行业里，他就像一团快乐的泡泡。他对待工作一丝不苟，但对自己却并非如此。在各种庆祝胜利的场合，他都曾跳过“卷心菜舞”和“机器人舞”，还经常拿自己对冰淇淋的喜爱和自己作为后卫的魁梧身材开玩笑。

他的人生并非一帆风顺。他由单亲父亲抚养长大，小时候经常坐在杨百翰大学体育场外，通过收音机收听比赛，因为球票对他的家庭来说太贵了。他在杨百翰大学待了一年，之后前往加州奥克兰传教，毕业后以替补身份重返美洲狮队，最终凭借自己的努力赢得了上场比赛的机会。

西塔克的工作确实非常艰巨，尽管他从中获得了极大的乐趣。他需要吸引足球运动员来到这所大学，而这些球员必须遵守严格的社交规则，没有任何犯错的余地。

“他做的事情其实很难，”杨说，“但他做起来却显得如此轻松。”

虽然目前名单上的 66 名球员已经完成了传教任务，但你不可能完全用摩门教的孩子来组建一支球队。

将非教会成员带到普罗沃需要截然不同的信仰飞跃。学校一直努力消除人们对教会的种种误解和恐惧。

“我们把AJ带到这里并非仅仅为了让他皈依我们的信仰，”沃金克谈到NBA状元秀AJ·迪班萨时说道，迪班萨在普罗沃待了一个赛季后就进入了职业联赛。“我们有几十名学生运动员并非我们的信徒，但他们和其他人一样，都觉得自己属于我们的社区。”

有人认为，外界认为杨百翰大学难以招揽学生的恰恰是它缺乏传统大学毕业仪式这一点，而这或许正是它最大的卖点。史密斯经常花费大量时间与职业篮球和冰球运动员签约和洽谈，他注意到这些运动员的心态正在发生微妙的转变。

“它已经不再是以前那种充斥着兄弟会成员的大学刻板印象了，”他说。“希望孩子能在更高水平的赛场上打球的家长，想要的是一个能够让孩子专注于最重要的事情的地方。而这正是（杨百翰大学）所提供的。”

但这还远远不够。上赛季末，杨百翰大学有13名球员通过转会市场离队；没有一人预计会成为本赛季的首发球员。

“我们正处于一种类似狂野西部的环境中，并且发展得很好，”杨说道，“因为卡拉尼就是这么特别。”

他补充道：“我知道，对一些人来说，这简直是‘我的天哪！那边发生了什么？太神奇了！’他们觉得这一切很快就会过去，但我们想让大家明白的是，我们一直在做这些。这并不是什么新鲜事。我们一直在海拔23000英尺左右的大本营待命。现在，我们准备登顶珠穆朗玛峰了。”