Gordon Monson: BYU football could rule the world if these two powers joined forces

Since joining the Big 12, BYU football has amped up its competition, creating not just a challenge that led to a 2-7 conference mark last season, but grading a road leading into the future entering a dark tunnel of uncertainty, a dark tunnel regarding how things are going to get any better.

BYU basketball entered that same tunnel, but found more light when Mark Pope’s team saw more success than anyone thought it would in its inaugural run through the country’s best college basketball league — until it lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. But the high beams went on with the most unexpected turn of events. Pope was offered the job at Kentucky and BYU hired rising NBA head coaching prospect Kevin Young, who came to the Cougars with the most lucrative coaching contract in BYU’s history. He’s making between $3 and $4 million annually.

You know what’s happened since. Young has turned BYU into a recruiting hot spot, landing future NBA lottery picks in a manner the Cougars have never done. Where’s the money and the pull coming from for such success? Two names: Ryan Smith, the billionaire, and Danny Ainge, the baller.

Young hasn’t coached a game yet, his team hasn’t won a game yet, but it appears that BYU basketball is doing what almost nobody thought it could. It’s launching itself onto the national stage and it’s blown past BYU football in doing so.

BYU football’s biggest opponent is no longer a school in the Big 12, it’s BYU basketball. And if things go the way they might with Young running the program and Smith backing it, Kalani Sitake will be feeling the comparative heat in a major way, especially if his team continues to bump and skid in mediocrity this next season, and in the seasons beyond.

With Young at the controls and the money of Smith adding to the NIL pot and the NBA influence of Ainge all in the mix, how in the world can BYU football keep up with that?

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Gordon Monson: BYU football could rule the world if these two powers joined forces

Gordon Monson: BYU football could rule the world if these two powers joined forces

Gordon Monson: BYU football could rule the world if these two powers joined forces

Gordon Monson: BYU football could rule the world if these two powers joined forces

Gordon Monson: BYU football could rule the world if these two powers joined forces