Brigham Young Cougars safety Faletau Satuala (11) celebrates an interception with teammates as BYU and Stanford play in Provo on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. BYU won 27-3. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret NewsDoug RobinsonThu, December 4, 2025 at 4:00 AM UTC·6 min readHeading into championship weekend, here’s why BYU — win, lose or draw this weekend — is one of the best stories in college football.
• From out of nowhere to College Football Playoff contender. The Cougars were unranked in the preseason rankings. They were unranked after Week 1, too. And Week 2. And Week 3. And Week 4.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Cougs had to work hard to get someone to notice them. They finally cracked the AP Top 25 in Week 5 — at No. 25. In the ensuing weeks, they were ranked, in order, 23, 18, 15, 11, 10, 8, 12, 11, 11, 11. They are 11-1 heading into Saturday’s Big 12 championship game against Texas Tech, which handed them their only loss of the season. BYU is one win away from the College Football Playoff.
• The teenager at quarterback. An 18-year-old can’t buy or consume alcohol, gamble in a casino or rent a car or a hotel room, but he can run for 11 touchdowns in Division I football and throw for almost 2,600 yards and 14 touchdowns (against just four interceptions).
Brigham Young University Cougars quarterback Bear Bachmeier (47) greets fans before the game against the Colorado Buffaloes at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado, on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025. | Rio GiancarloBear Bachmeier, a true freshman just three months removed from high school, has been the big story of the season. If that weren’t enough to overcome, he didn’t even participate in BYU’s spring practice; that’s because he was going through spring ball with Stanford.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFate lent a hand bringing him to BYU from Stanford — the Stanford coach was fired, Bachmeier transferred to BYU in May, BYU’s incoming starter Jake Retzlaff left school and in August Bear replaced him. Since then, he’s played so well that fans are writing and singing songs about him on YouTube — “Gosh Dang Centaur,” which is what an opposing coach called the 238-pounder. For BYU, finding Bachmeier was like catching lightning in a bottle.
• The resilient offensive coordinator. After basing the team’s offense around the skills and experience of Retzlaff, who led the team to 11 wins last season, Aaron Roderick learned in July that he had to scrap those plans and start over. Retzlaff was leaving school at the 11th hour. After holding a three-man tryout for Retzlaff’s replacement, Roderick settled on a kid just out of high school who hadn’t gone through spring practice. He brilliantly tailored the offense to the newcomer’s abilities and added new concepts weekly as the 18-year-old progressed through the season.
BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick looks on during a practice at BYU's outdoor practice facility in Provo. | BYU PhotoIt wasn’t the first time Roderick has had to call on his own resilience. He was fired by the University of Utah in 2016, one in a long line of OCs to get the pink slip there. He was immediately hired by Kalani Sitake, his former BYU teammate. He came in as the “offensive consultant.” A year later he was the “passing game coordinator.” Last season he was promoted to offensive coordinator. On a side note, he’s been on the winning side the last three times BYU has played Utah, his former employer.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement• As Sports Illustrated noted this week, “(BYU’s) move from independent status into the Big 12 has gone better than could have rightfully been expected.”
It’s easy to forget that only a few years ago the Cougars were begging for membership in one of the elite conferences and there were no takers. For 12 years, none of the then-Power Five conferences would take them; when the Pac-10 elected to take Utah but not BYU in 2011, BYU chose independence and a TV deal rather than remain in the Mountain West. The next few years BYU’s performance was average at best and it seemed unlikely the school would ever regain the national prominence it had achieved under LaVell Edwards.
The only reason the school finally got a foot in the door with the Big 12 was because the Pac-12 blew up; in the mad game of musical chairs that ensued, the Cougars found a chair in the Big 12, which was desperate after Texas and Oklahoma announced plans to abandon the league.
Then the Cougars went out and laid an egg — they won only five games in their first season, closing with five consecutive losses.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIn the two seasons since then, they have won 22 of 25 games.
• The head coach finds a way. It’s all but forgotten now that Sitake’s job status was being questioned for a time. His debut as a head coach in 2016, in which he inherited 12 starters, including future NFL standouts Jamaal Williams and Taysom Hill, went well, resulting in a 9-4 record. Then the honeymoon was over.
They won only four games the following year. Sitake, who had made the mistake of filling his original staff with former BYU players and BYU teammates, had to clean house, which included the painful dismissal of beloved former Heisman winner Ty Detmer as OC.
Sitake’s teams were 7-6 in his third and fourth seasons, but in the COVID year of 2020 the Cougars took off. Over the next three seasons they were 29-9. Sitake and his team had finally found their footing when the next challenge arrived — the step up to the Big 12. After that poor five-win season, they picked up where they left off.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSitake, who is as BYU as it gets (raised in Provo, played for BYU, member of The Church of Jesus Christ, which owns BYU) has pulled it off. Humble, soft spoken, unfailingly polite and smart — much like the legendary LaVell Edwards — Sitake is a popular and much-admired figure in Provo and beyond. That much became clear this week when Penn State, one of college football’s blue bloods, courted Sitake. Rich donors decided that couldn’t happen.
“Some people are not replaceable,” Crumbl Cookies CEO/BYU donor Jason McGowan had posted on X.
BYU head football coach Kalani Sitake speaks as he’s joined by BYU athletic director Brian Santiago during a press conference held at the Student Athlete Building in Provo on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret NewsAdvertisementAdvertisement
