{"id":399171,"date":"2026-01-10T11:57:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/399171\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T11:57:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:57:17","slug":"as-college-becomes-game-of-musical-chairs-byu-bucking-the-trend-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/399171\/","title":{"rendered":"As college becomes game of musical chairs, BYU bucking the trend \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

While chaos has blanketed college football<\/a> in the state and more than 30% of college players are in the transfer portal, BYU coach Kalani Sitake\u2019s regime has, well, kind of escaped.<\/p>\n

As of Friday afternoon, not one starter from the 2025 team has left for the transfer portal.<\/p>\n

Sitake lost his defensive coordinator, Jay Hill,<\/a> who took his cornerback coach, Jernaro Gilford<\/a>, with him. But nobody followed them. Not one player.<\/p>\n

Knock on wood.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the roster heading into this weekend.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Well, one could preach culture or momentum, all that stuff. But it boils down to one single huge factor that clearly stands out since the Cougars defeated Georgia Tech in the Pop-Tarts Bowl<\/a> in Orlando.<\/p>\n

BYU has become a player-driven team. <\/p>\n

Like 100%.<\/p>\n

And that is a huge factor heading into winter workouts, spring practice, acceptance of returning players from church missions, and a sprinkling of transfer portal players expected to be announced in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s replacement, Kelly Poppinga, told a BYUtv audience Friday that the retention effort began the day after the bowl game. He described coaches taking to the phones for 12 hours a day to re-recruit their stars. <\/p>\n

But that was matched or even surpassed by player-driven emotions wanting to keep it rolling, to come back.<\/p>\n

Now, nobody\u2019s naive enough to think this wasn\u2019t done without BYU\u2019s collectives and revenue-sharing program having a lot to do with shoring up NIL contracts. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s reality today.<\/p>\n

But it was done, starting with some of the most prized players, like honorable mention All-America safety <\/a>Faletau Satuala<\/a>, whom many believed would be targeted by Hill and Michigan. <\/p>\n

But, somewhat surprisingly, Satuala announced his return quickly<\/a>. So did tackle Keanu Tanuvasa<\/a>, Isaiah Glasker<\/a>, Siale Esera<\/a> and other defenders. <\/p>\n

The offense followed, capped by Big 12 offensive player of the year running back LJ Martin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Poppinga said he expects the late news on corner Evan Johnson, BYU\u2019s best cover athlete, is soon to come out in BYU\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

That is quite remarkable.<\/p>\n

On Friday, USC tight end Walker Lyons<\/a>, older brother of QB commit Ryder Lyons, announced he was transferring to BYU to compete for departing Ryan Carsen\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

On the day Hill announced he would follow his friend Kyle Whittingham to Michigan, it became a full three days of working the phones, said Poppinga.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, I just think the players love Kalani. And a lot of those guys, all of them, came to play for him. Hill would say the same thing. Jay is a humble guy, and he sees things, he knows that no one person or player is bigger than them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poppinga said BYU players ran this team with a feeling of retention and continuity.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, us coaches, you\u2019ve got to put them in the right positions and make sure that we\u2019re making the right adjustments and doing the right things. But when you have great players and great leadership, I think everything else takes care of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corner Tre Alexander<\/a> began his own campaign to maintain the roster on TV right after Jay Hill announced he was going to Michigan. He then texted Poppinga, saying, \u201cCoach, just so you know. I ain\u2019t going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he\u2019s like, \u2018And I\u2019m going to call everybody right now. I\u2019m going to help you out to keep everybody here.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the best,\u201d said Poppinga. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018Coach, I\u2019m rallying the troops.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then a couple of hours later, he\u2019s like, \u2018Coach, nobody\u2019s leaving.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Poppinga: \u201cThere are so many pieces to this thing. And it\u2019s just not one player, one coach. I think it\u2019s just the collective unit that we have. It\u2019s been special. And it all starts with Kalani and his leadership and just this culture he has here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitake, said Poppinga, was the biggest portal guy when Penn State came calling.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe went in the portal and stayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Brigham Young Cougars alumnus Brian Logan talks to teammate Kelly Poppinga during the Brigham Young University alumni game at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo on March 31, 2023. | Ryan Sun, Deseret News <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While chaos has blanketed college football in the state and more than 30% of college players are in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,3125,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-399171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-news-feed-local","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}