alt=Jay DrewARLINGTON, Texas — BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe was a busy man at the recently concluded Big 12 football media days Wednesday and Thursday, and for good reason.
It seems like everybody at AT&T Stadium — from national media outlets to fan bloggers — wanted to talk to the Cougars’ 18-year AD who had a huge hand in getting BYU into the Big 12.
“They picked us 11th. I think we will be better than that. … And I think that we are going to compete, and we are going to go, we are going to learn, and we will see where we go.” — BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe on BYU’s first football season in Big 12
A lot of what Holmoe — the four-time Super Bowl winner as a member of the San Francisco 49ers — said at the home of the Dallas Cowboys was a rehashing, for a different audience, of the long and winding road BYU endured to get to Power Five status.
He also talked a lot about BYU’s readiness level, particularly in football, for the 14-team league in 2023 before Texas and Oklahoma bolt for the Southeastern Conference.
“They picked us 11th,” he said of media members who voted in the preseason Big 12 football poll. “I think we will be better than that. … And I think that we are going to compete, and we are going to go, we are going to learn, and we will see where we go.”
Holmoe on his future
Having been hired on March 1, 2005, to replace co-ADs Val Hale and Elaine Michaelis as BYU’s only AD after the school streamlined its men’s and women’s athletic department into one, Holmoe recently hit his 18-year mark as the leader of BYU sports.
Now that he’s accomplished what some are calling the most significant achievement in BYU athletics history — Power Five membership — the Deseret News asked Holmoe how much longer he will stay at the helm.
“I don’t think a long time. I will say this — this is a job that takes a lot of energy, and a lot of passion. At least it does for me. So that’s how I have done it. And I have that (still),” he said. “Like today, they just gave me a (metaphoric) IV shot of adrenaline, passion, love, energy. Like, I think I can go for 20 (more) years today.”
He said when he wakes up tomorrow morning, things could be different.
“The important thing is I need energy and I need passion, and I need to do it right. Gotta do it right,” he continued. “And I care so much about this school, that when the time comes where I feel someone can do it better, I am going to pass that baton. There is no question about it.
“You are not going to see me drag this thing down. I won’t do it.”
Holmoe on his legacy
As has been mentioned, Holmoe’s legacy until September 2021, when BYU received the Big 12 invitation, has been his hiring of some pretty successful football and basketball coaches — Bronco Mendenhall and Kalani Sitake on the gridiron and Dave Rose and Mark Pope on the hardwoods.
In Arlington, he downplayed the notion that he will be remembered decades from now as the man most responsible for getting BYU into the Big 12. He said in his mind his legacy is his love for BYU and Cougars athletics.
“Because I played football here, and that changes everything,” he noted. “I played for LaVell (Edwards). It changes everything. I played with the best Hall of Fame players. I played with a bunch of college football Hall of Famers — Marc Wilson, Steve Young, Jim McMahon, maybe more to come.
“I am invested in this thing way beyond being an AD. And so like, if my legacy is I have been a part of it, that is enough for me. Because it is Cougar Nation.”
Holmoe said he doesn’t want to be exalted above the average BYU fan, and joked that he would rather be out there rushing the field after wins (if it were allowed) than sitting in the press box watching all the other fans do it.
“But I can’t do that because it will cost me too much money,” he said.
Nothing keeping him up at night
Holmoe was as relaxed and calm around the media in the Metroplex as he’s been for quite some time, joking and conversing with reporters much like Sitake does most of the time.
In regard to football and the monumental task that lies ahead of BYU’s marquee sport, Holmoe said nothing is keeping him awake and night because of the work that has been done the past 22 months.
“I think that Kalani is well-prepared. He has put together a really good staff, did a good job with the transfer portal. He’s done a good job of bringing in recruits, high school and (junior college) recruits,” Holmoe said.
“With internal football operation, he has made a number of changes. All are good, and I am supportive of the changes that he has made … in our sports performance, and in mental health, and in rehabilitation.”
The Cougars open the season Sept. 2 at home against Sam Houston, and will play their first Big 12 football game on Sept. 23 at Kansas, which earned the No. 9 spot in the preseason poll.
“Everybody has expectations in Cougar Nation of how each team is going to be, and some are making their predictions,” Holmoe said. “I keep saying to myself, ‘I hope that we have made the right preparations.’
“We have prepared like crazy. But we won’t know whether we have prepared in the right way until (we) start playing. And then you see if you can compete and you have the right processes and win the tight games and all the things that come with college athletics.”
Not just happy to be here
Holmoe and Sitake, for that matter, have acknowledged time and again the past two years that just getting into a Power Five league isn’t the end all and be all. They know the hard work is just getting started.
“We are in this thing to win. I am not going to back down. … If our culture is right, if our process and things that we do are right, we are going to win games,” Holmoe said. “And so, that is kinda my focus. I am not looking at the schedule going, ‘win, win.’ I don’t really know what these teams look like.”
Certainly, it won’t be like independence, when BYU rarely played the same teams more than once or twice.
“But this year, you are going to get used to saying, ‘Oh, Texas Tech, that is their style. … We are not anywhere close to those unique little intricacies of competing against a team in your own conference.”
‘I think it is a strategy’
Speaking of opposing venues, some Big 12 teams are already gearing up to host BYU and its large fanbase — particularly in Texas. Former Mountain West foe TCU has announced it will not sell single-game tickets for the Cougars’ arrival at Amon Carter Stadium in Fort Worth on Oct. 14. The Horned Frogs are also not allowing their ticket-holders to transfer tickets to other fans (read: BYU fans) in an attempt to keep BYU fans from overtaking their stadium as they used to do back in the 2000s.
Holmoe isn’t troubled by it.
“I think it is a strategy,” he said. “And I don’t think it is the way the market moves as much as they feel that that could be a competitive advantage. And that, I think is a tribute to Cougar Nation.”
Holmoe said he knows TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati quite well, and is eager to see how it plays out because swapping, selling and trading tickets is part of the “fan experience” and there might be some pushback.
“We will see how it works,” Holmoe said. “I am not offended.”
It’s been real for awhile
Holmoe said BYU’s move to the Big 12 became “more real” on the day when then-commissioner Bob Bowlsby called him and asked, simply, “Do you want to be in the conference?”
“That was real,” Holmoe said. “That is when I nearly fell down. … So it has been real to me for a long time. This (Big 12 media confab) kinda puts an exclamation point on ‘we did the right thing.’ It is good to be here. It is really good to be here.”
And have a seat at the table.
