What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
Three Stories I Thought About This Week
I went through our site and found three stories I thought were interesting this week, and I wanted to redirect readers to them and share my thoughts.
Kalani’s New Boss
Earlier this week, BYU football coach Kalani Sitake got a new boss. No, athletic director Brian Santiago did not leave BYU. But Sitake got the Tommy Lloyd treatment.
The Deseret News reported earlier this week that BYU Advancement vice president Keith Vorkink will oversee BYU football in a split that may be designed to preserve the relationship between Sitake and Santiago, which is now perceived as strained after comments that the head coach made earlier this month about resourcing.
“We’ve been given the challenge of doing the most with the least,” he said.
That’s not what the administration wants to hear when the Cougars moved heaven and earth to keep Sitake in Provo after Penn State made a full-court press to lure him away to replace James Franklin.
Arizona did this after last season’s Final Four run as the Wildcats removed athletic director Desiree Francois-Reed as Lloyd’s direct report. He now reports to university president Suresh Garimella. Per the Arizona Daily Star the move was about resourcing. Garimella will determine the men’s basketball program’s resourcing, including NIL, moving forward.
The Cougars have incredible stability with Sitake. The Wildcats have incredible stability with Lloyd. That means keeping both coaches happy. If the relationship with the AD is causing strain, one of two things happens. Either the coach leaves, or the AD is fired. Neither BYU nor Arizona want to lose their coaches. Hence, the arrangement.
This is a win for Sitake. Expect the “resources” he’s looking for to start flowing faster than they might have otherwise under Santiago. Why? Santiago must think of all sports. Vorkink only has to keep the football coach happy. That’s easy. Just say yes.
The Right Rules for Pros
The Big 12, the Big Ten, and the SEC all passed rules this week to keep professional athletes out of college sports. It’s the right thing to do. Just don’t expect it to take for a bit.
The rules are designed to keep what’s happening at LSU from happening moving forward. The returns of two former Ole Miss players to LSU after washing out during NFL training camp shouldn’t be allowed to happen. But since both players are members of the Class of 2022 — the class that is suing the NCAA in state and district courts for a fifth year under the new age-based eligibility rule passed in June — they’re getting recourse they shouldn’t get to potentially play, pending what happens in a Louisiana court next week.
I’m not talking about the Class of 2022 student-athletes who haven’t turned pro. I believe the NCAA should have found a way to grandfather in those student-athletes who wanted to come back for a fifth year — and had only played four years — to avoid this mess. Even the NCAA acknowledged in a memo to member schools that only a few hundred are suing for the right.
The NCAA made this a mess by being short-sighted about a good rule (what else is new?). Now the conferences are trying to clean it up for the returning pros and are running into the same issue. And everyone is getting lumped in the same bucket.
Most of these state cases are going to drag into September and force coaches to make big decisions about playing these players that could come back to haunt them if the NCAA wins. But let’s be honest — does anyone think the NCAA is going to win?
But good on the Big 12, the Big Ten, and the SEC for reacting to this and getting a rule on the books. It’s the right thing, even if it’s going to take time for it to come to fruition.
Worried Yet, TCU?
The TCU Horned Frogs did the Ireland thing on Saturday and came away with a 15-10 loss to North Carolina. What stood out was that the Horned Frogs scored on their first two drives, taking a 10-0 lead, and then didn’t score again. It didn’t help that TCU was missing one of its top receivers to injury, and the defense made running the ball hard on Jeremy Payne.
But TCU also had 11 penalties for 90 yards, and some of those penalties were just dumb.
Put, as our Pete Mundo pointed out, the loser of this game the past three years has not fared well the rest of the season:
Kansas State (2025): 6-6
Florida State (2024): 2-10
Navy (2023): 5-7
Nebraska (2022): 5-7
The loss establishes a ceiling that TCU will have to fight all season. And the Horned Frogs are worried about banning reporters from covering them? Oh, about that …
Do what you like, TCU. Beat writers are still going to do their job.
