BYU Cougars College Football Media Day Quote, 07/08/2025

First of all, I want to thank Cosmo, our cheerleaders. Thank you for distracting everybody as I walked up. We’re excited to be here in Frisco, Texas for a Big 12 media days and it’s an honor for us to be here and for me to represent BYU as its head coach.

Well, first I want to express our appreciation to the leadership of the Big 12 Commissioner and his staff and everyone that puts so much effort into making this an amazing day for our coaches and also for our players. I look forward to answering any questions you guys may have. But before I do that, I want to first also express my appreciation to all the all the partners, all the schools that are involved in the Big 12 Conference, especially the head coaches.

It’s amazing when you look at the talent in our on our teams and our programs. But I look at the head coaches and being able to get to know them and I appreciate their friendship and their kindness to me.

It’s been really helpful for me being in this Conference with them and I look forward to competing with them on the field. It’s an honor for us to compete on the field with them and their programs. And I also want to express our appreciation to our fans of BYU and specifically our student body and our alumni, also the faculty and staff that works at BYU.

Also want to recognize, officially recognize our President, Shane Reese and also Keith Vorkink, our Vice President. And also want to officially welcome our Athletic Director, Brian Santiago.

Brian is in a new role as an athletic director. I’ve been around him for the last 10 years and seen his leadership and his commitment. He was Tom Holmoe’s right hand man and I’m glad and I’m excited to follow his leadership and to work with him. Not only in our football program, but also in the athletic department and at the university. Also want to let our players know how much I appreciate them and we have five young men that are out here representing the team. The difficult part is that I think I could have chosen from about 30 leaders that I think will do a great job speaking here.

For our program in media days, we have on our offensive side LJ Martin and Chase Roberts. On the defensive side, we have linebackers Jack Kelly and Isaiah Glasker and defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa.

That being said, I want to open up the floor for you guys. Ask me any questions and get this thing started. Thank you.

Coach, in the face of some of the off-the-field distractions this offseason, you said a little bit ago that every team develops its own identity. In the face of this uncertainty, what identity have you seen start to emerge with your group? Or is that something that you don’t fully see until the fall?

I think the identity is still a work in progress. I think you have to have a foundation that’s set on some principles and you have to have a mission that that you want your program to follow through with. So, we have all those in place, but I think there’s room for flexibility for our team to find their own identity and that’s usually done with the leaders and the team itself. I would love for me to speak for them, but you have five young men that can do that. And I think as we go throughout the year, we’ll start to establish their identity not only on the field but off the field. So, I’m looking forward to the leadership and there’s so much excitement and energy around our program and that’s a big part of what the players and how and how they conduct themselves.

Coach, losing a senior quarterback. How has the locker room reacted to that and where is the QB battle at?

Yeah, I think first of all, there’s competition at every position. So, I think the one that gets the most attention is quarterback in every program. But everybody in in our program has to be competitive and you have to fight for your spot and then you have to balance that with loving each other and mentoring and taking care of each other. So that’s a fine line that I mentioned before, all the head coaches do a great job at doing that in their programs. I think for me it’s just allowing the guys to compete in the quarterback room we have. I mean, if you’re going to play at BYU, you have to be able to throw the ball. So, we have guys that can sling the ball and they all have different skill sets. The fortunate part for me is I have a coaching staff that was able to keep intact.

And so there’s always a knowledge of the offense for the guys that are there and then we have incoming talent that I think it’d be really special for us. So let’s settle it on the field, let them compete and then I only know one way and I just play the best guys. That’s how it works.

With the recent events this last few weeks, there’s been a lot of attention to the honor code and I wanted to hear your thoughts on what it means to you to be at a university that has an honor code and what role it plays for you as a coach and a mentor of these young men.

Yeah, our university is sponsored and affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So, there’s a level of expectation, a standard that we ask our student athletes and our students all together to live well. Every school has their standards. We have ours too and our expectations. We have an academic expectation as well. So, if young people don’t fit the academic criteria, then they don’t get into school. These are just part of the things that you have to be committed to and we expect our students to live according to what they what they signed up for.

Just to be clear, you don’t anticipate Jake Retzlaff being a part of the program going forward. Is that correct?

I think right now, I mean, first of all, I love Jake Retzlaff. We love Jake Retzlaff and appreciate all that he’s done for our program. I think it’ll be inappropriate for me to make a statement on his situation first. I think that’s his right. I think it’s a private, private matter that he can speak for himself and I’m going to give him the opportunity to do that.

Just wanted to ask you, in your opinion, looking ahead to this upcoming season, what’s different about this team versus previous iterations of your football program?

We’ll figure it out. We’ll find out. I mean, my job as a head coach is to make sure that we’re playing at our best. Did we do that last year? Not consistently enough for me. And so, I’ve got a lot of things to work on and a lot of things that I’ve learned from quite a bit. I mean, I’m going into my 10th year as a head coach and so I’d like to say that I’m kind of older now and then hopefully wiser, but I do know one thing if we’re going to make any improvement it’s got to start with me first and then I think everybody can figure out how to get that much better themselves.

And so I’m going to focus on things that I can do which is control the team and give them an opportunity and a culture and an environment where they can really thrive whether if they’re new or an incoming player or if they’re someone that’s developed in our program throughout the years.

How’s BYU’s recruiting really transformed this year and what do you think of the individuals you brought in?

I think the key has been just the invite to the Big 12 Conference. First of all, when this thing all started, I mean when I got the job, we were an independent team. When I grew up cheering for BYU as a young kid we were in the WAC, then we went in the Mountain West and went to Independence. So, the difference was that the change and first of all the leadership that Tom Holmoe had for us as an athletic director, he did an amazing job. He’s retired now and probably got his toes in the sand right now, but his leadership was amazing. He was able to work with Brian Santiago and his staff and get this program ready to enter a power conference like the Big 12.

And so, when that opportunity came, when I first got the job, he asked me what we want to get done and the goal was to play the best that we can, even with an independent schedule, try to the toughest teams on our schedule and we’ll learn from the experiences as we did that throughout the years. Following his leadership, I think it’s prepared the entire program and other sports, the opportunity to just kind of be prepping for the enter into the Big 12.

So, when we got invited that was kind of the change. We’re now we’re in a power conference and thankful to the Big 12 for inviting us in into the conference. But we saw things change not just from resources but also, just it kind of settled a lot of arguments for people not to come to BYU. So now going into our third year, we feel like we have good momentum and got some good things going. But all that had to happen with what Tom Holmoe did for us in the two decades that he was the AD.

The 2026 recruiting class is one of the best in BYU history. Now that students, they decommit a lot and they transfer a lot more than the previous years. How do you make sure that these students that you’re recruiting for 2026 stay with this program?

A lot of them are going to go on missions. How do you make sure that you keep them on board for years to come? That’s my job. I have to do a great job at creating an environment that they want to be a part of, and a lot of that is understanding them and creating an environment where they want to be focused on getting a degree.

I think transferring quite a bit, you lose credits and we got to get the focus right back on the students getting and earning a degree. And so that’s what we’re going to focus on.

I want to develop them in a lot of different ways. A lot of the young men that are coming back into our program through the transfer portal, we recruited the first time. So, I’d like to get it right the first time and seems like we’re doing better now than we did before. So, let’s just try to do that and hang on to them. I’d rather do it that way and get it right and that’s on me. If I’m not able to retain them, then that’s my fault.

Appreciate all you guys. Thank you sports media for all you do for our game. College football is in a really good spot and a lot of you guys have to do for that. Thank you.