PROVO — Recruiting is the lifeblood for all programs in major college football. With the hire of Kalani Sitake as BYU’s next head coach, the Cougars are starting to run their recruiting efforts like those in major college football. In a way, it’s a new world for BYU football.

That’s the world of recruiting that Sitake and his staff have placed BYU into, and it was needed for the Cougars if they wanted to have a chance to elevate their program to new heights. Heights that BYU and their fans continue to covet and hope for.

When Tom Holmoe looked for a new head coach to replace Bronco Mendenhall last December, Holmoe stated that recruiting was a huge part of the head coaching job. BYU needed a coach to not only attract top LDS talent but also improve the depth on the roster and open new recruiting doors for the program.

With Sitake, BYU has expanded their recruiting efforts adding additional support staff that had not been seen with previous regimes — highlighted by the hiring of former BYU and NFL tight end Tevita Ofahengaue as director of recruiting operations. Ofahengaue, or “T.O.” as other members of the staff call him, was quite the coup for Sitake as Ofahengaue is one of the most connected men in high school football in the Beehive State.

With the larger support staff and the new commitment to recruiting, BYU’s coaches have hit the ground running and are not afraid to recruit kids who might be receiving interest from top schools in the country. As BYU’s defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki said back in January regarding recruits, “It doesn’t matter who’s recruiting them, we’re going after them.”

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This past February, according to Rivals rankings, BYU closed on their 2016 recruiting class landing four 3-star prospects and a 4-star prospect in Handsome Tanielu who was once a Utah commit and had turned down the likes of the Utes and Texas to sign with BYU. Tanielu was Sitake’s first commit and was the first sign that this new and improved recruiting approach was working for the Cougars.

BYU’s 2016 class was the 51st ranked class on Rivals team rankings, the highest ranking for the Cougars since 2010.

Now the challenge for Sitake and his staff is to assemble an entire recruiting class, with a whole year to do it. The 2017 class had one commit that they inherited with Lone Peak speedster Jackson McChesney, and since the Cougars have added a pair of tight end prospects.

BYU’s staff has had to make up ground in terms of offering prospects, as the 2017 class was basically a blank canvas for Sitake to work with. They have been aggressive in California, Texas and of course locally here in Utah. It’s not a coincidence that those three states have coaches on the staff who hail from those parts of the country and also played at BYU in Ty Detmer (San Antonio), Jernaro Gilford (Hawthorne, California) and a handful of coaches who grew up in Utah.

Being a program that has some unique challenges that other universities don’t have, it helps BYU having coaches like Detmer and Gilford on their staff to sell the BYU experience because they lived it, and when they arrived at BYU as fresh-faced football players they were also not members of the LDS faith. Opening doors with non-LDS prospects is critical to BYU's success in the future. It can be easy to forget that when BYU won the National Championship in 1984, less than 35% of that roster served LDS missions.

With the offers that BYU has extended for the 2017 class, more than 65 percent of those prospects currently hold offers from multiple Power Five programs. That just wasn’t happening in years past. BYU was identifying prospects that fit BYU and probably no one else. The connections and relationships that Sitake and his staff are forming or are trying to form will play a critical role for BYU if they hope to land some of these prospects. But you have to commend them for trying.

There will always be players that grow up dreaming of playing for BYU, but the Cougars have to continue selling themselves and showing they can be a destination again for elite LDS prospects and non-LDS athletes. That’s what gave LaVell Edwards so much success during his legendary career at BYU.

Edwards knew that BYU was a great opportunity both on the football field and in life for many kids. Sitake and his staff (who most of them played for Edwards) understand that, and that’s the foundation the build a majority of the relationships on. That’s why it was a stroke of genius from Sitake to take firesides to the summer time. Recruits can actually attend and see the spiritual side of BYU football first hand. That’s again the difference that is taking place within BYU’s football program right now. BYU’s staff is wired to recruit and it came at a critical time.

BYU football is at a crossroads right now. They have had a consistent program that wins a lot of football games and is competitive with basically anyone on the field. But there needed to be an increased effort in recruiting. Because as any great coach will tell you, it’s not always about the Xs and Os; it’s about Jimmys and the Joes that win ball games. Sitake knows that, and BYU is better for it.

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