PROVO, Utah — Kalani Sitake was just 28 and trying to come to grips with the lofty expectations of a new coaching gig. It was right before Christmas in 2004 when he was offered a precious commodity: a seat on the team plane to the Fiesta Bowl. The Utah Utes were 11-0, the marvel of college football, but also in the midst of serious staffing change.
With Utah coach Urban Meyer already having accepted the Florida job and taking several coaches with him, Kyle Whittingham had been named successor and had hired Sitake from Southern Utah as linebackers coach for the following season.
Reveling in something he didn’t have a hand in didn’t sit with the new guy. Sitake politely declined by boldly telling Whittingham:
“Why don’t we just plan on doing this ourselves again later?”
That was Sitake’s first up-close view of how a perfect season can be capped. While Sitake stayed in Salt Lake City and introduced himself to recruits, Utah beat Pittsburgh 35-7 and finished 12-0 as the first team from a non-automatic qualifying conference to bust into a BCS bowl. And that question to his boss later proved prescient with another undefeated run in 2008.
Almost 20 years later, Sitake is clad in royal BYU blue with his massive former fullback hands tucked into the pouch of his hoodie beaming with pride rewinding that flashback. His Cougars are 8-0, unblemished with four remaining regular-season games left, and he considers himself among the luckiest coaches around to possess easily obtainable memories of what it’s like living through an undefeated season nobody saw coming.
His sideburns now all silvery, Sitake, 49, has been back home leading his alma mater since 2016.
The latest chapter of this story is fittingly set against an old friend and even older foe: Whittingham and Utah on Saturday night at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The Cougars are No. 9 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, the last remaining unbeaten team in the Big 12 and have a chance at a top-four seed in the Playoff.
The official top four seeds in the inaugural College Football Playoff 12-team bracket:
1️⃣ @oregonfootball
2️⃣ @GeorgiaFootball
3️⃣ @CanesFootball
4️⃣ @BYUfootballRead more: https://t.co/WwiM9ZOvW1 pic.twitter.com/iZFHetZElH
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) November 6, 2024
Picked 13th out of 16 in this year’s conference preseason media poll, the Cougars were 5-7 in their Big 12 debut in 2023, starting 5-2 before an abysmal five-game slide to end the year left doubters wondering if Sitake and his staff were going to be able to cut it at the power conference level after over a decade as an independent.
They’ve answered that question. Despite ending the season 0-4 as a starter a year ago, junior quarterback Jake Retzlaff has reached the potential the coaching staff saw in him when they recruited him out of Riverside City College, accounting for 21 total touchdowns. The defense is tied for sixth in the country in turnovers gained with 18. And well beyond the data, the vibe in Provo is embracing where they are.
“We weren’t terrible then, and we’re not perfect now,” said BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick.
At the moment, BYU must exist in competing realities: as the fairytale team of 2024, and team that must provide the appropriate ending with the final month of the schedule here.
Sitake might’ve received his undergraduate degree in football from the legendary BYU football coach LaVell Edwards. He learned how to block and to catch and love and appreciate everything around him from Edwards. The higher education piece? Well, that came about 40 miles north in crimson red, where Sitake experienced firsthand how rewarding and difficult it is to run the table.
Four years after he told Whittingham he wanted to have a hand himself in an unblemished season, Sitake and his old boss celebrated a 31-17 win over Nick Saban and Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Once they made their way back to the locker room as the celebration in New Orleans rolled on, Sitake grabbed hold of Whittingham.
“Remember when I said, ‘Let’s do this again?’” Sitake told Whittingham. “That was pretty cool to be able to manifest it.”
One of college football’s most intense rivalries is more entangled as any other.
This BYU coaching staff has seven former Utah players or coaches on it. Most of them, like Sitake, were schooled on the often improbable art of a perfect season in Salt Lake, too. Defensive coordinator Jay Hill played at Utah in the 1990s and was a graduate assistant under Meyer during the 2004 season and was later was the special teams coordinator under Whittingham during 2008. Roderick was the wide receivers coach in 2008. Defensive tackles coach Sione Pou’ha was a star defensive lineman on the 2004 team and recently coached at his alma mater from 2019 to 2021.
Gary Andersen, former Oregon State and Wisconsin head coach, is assisting BYU as a volunteer defensive coach. Andersen was Utah’s defensive coordinator during the 2008 season.
“It’s so freaking weird,” said BYU defensive end Tyler Batty.
It is and it isn’t.
Whittingham was a star linebacker at BYU in the 1980s and was forced to choose between returning to his alma mater as head coach or staying at Utah and succeeding Meyer in 2004. The list of red-to-blue or blue-to-red, if one cared enough to inspect it, is lengthy.
This BYU’s staff turn from red-to-blue has some members remembering living week-to-week knowing every team was hoping to knock them off their unbeaten pedestal while at Utah.
When there is a consistent flow of success, Sitake said, some unbeaten teams might tend to feel perhaps too comfortable. Not these Cougars. Their first eight wins haven’t been a constant tantalizing display of dominance. For example: BYU’s 38-35 escape at home against Oklahoma State on Oct. 18, when Retzlaff’s pass found receiver Darius Lassiter in the open field before Lassiter bounced off a few members of the Cowboy secondary to score with 10 seconds remaining.
DARIUS. LASSITER. 🤯#Big12FB | #GoCougs pic.twitter.com/37wEoKbinn
— Big 12 Studios (@big12studios) October 19, 2024
“We know who we are,” Retzlaff said later that night.
Which goes a long way. Roderick said this year’s BYU team benefits from its stout leadership as much as the coaches who have experienced such a rare ride as an undefeated season. Roderick rattles off names of players on that 2008 Utah team such as quarterback Brian Johnson or linebacker Stevenson Sylvester who “would not be denied” in their pursuit of perfection.
“And we have guys like that here now. But no one is thinking about going undefeated,” Roderick said. “I know that sounds so boring and so cliché, but when you truly get the players to buy into that and your leaders take that over, that’s invaluable.”
No moment has been too overwhelming. Like the bonkers Oklahoma State finish. Like the nine-play, 67-yard drive in the 18-15 win at CFP No. 13 SMU in Week 2 that set up the game-winning 26-yard chip-shot field goal by Will Ferrin with less than two minutes to go. And no game has been more odd than BYU thumping Kansas State 38-9 in Provo despite just 241 yards of total offense and having seven fewer minutes in time of possession.
“In football, everyone looks at the end result in search of that good feeling,” Sitake said. “If you look at your favorite movies, you always remember the endings that you loved.”
That’s precisely why 2004 and 2008 are held in the same regard at Utah as BYU’s 1984 title campaign. Starting 8-0 and suddenly controlling their own destiny on the 40th anniversary of the undefeated 1984 season has fans and former players lucky enough to have lived through the apex of the program believing.
“Now this fan base is on the exact same ride,” said Trevor Matich, an offensive lineman on the 1984 team, now an analyst at ESPN. “It’s just a feeling that takes me back 40 years ago.”
Hill said this year’s team is beyond the phase of second-guessing results. Which makes their jobs as coaches more taxing in the era of weekly Playoff rankings and social media where players read and hear incessant praise about the season nobody outside of Provo ever saw coming.
“Now they’re talking about what can happen,” he said. “When you get to be 8-0, not a lot of teams get there ever. Every game gets more exciting because you’ve put yourself in a position to be playing for more and more with each game. We tell these guys: ‘Quit listening to the noise. Make your own noise.’”
The noise exuding from Provo will boom much louder should the Cougars best their rivals and move to 9-0. After two decades of Utah dominating the rivalry — including a stretch where it went 14-4 against BYU — Sitake and his staff have helped close the gap. Saturday is the first time BYU has been favored at Utah since 2006. The Cougars won the last rivalry game in 2021 in Provo. It will also be the first time Utah and BYU have played a conference game since 2010, when they were members of the Mountain West. The following season, Utah started its Pac-12 journey and BYU became an independent.
“Football is a pendulum,” said Norm Chow, a former Utah lineman who was the architect of BYU’s vaunted offense back in its heyday under Edwards. “It always goes back and forth.”
Utah was chosen to win the Big 12 in the preseason media poll, but has tumbled to 4-4 after a 4-0 start. Three months later, BYU is alone atop the standings at 5-0 in conference play. Sitake said, in a way, it helps that last year’s slide at the end was so fresh to so many of its players.
“For some reason, you learn more when there’s pain involved,” he said.
After Utah, BYU has remaining games vs. Kansas (2-6), at Arizona State (6-2) and vs. Houston (4-5).
Inside BYU’s Student Athlete Building, sitting next to Batty, wide receiver Chase Roberts wore a black beanie with a message. He pointed to it: “Life is Good.”
“Life is good,” Batty said, and laughed, “but you can’t think that your s— doesn’t stink.”
(Top photo of BYU players Enoch Nawahine (No. 21) and Jake Retzlaff (No. 12) celebrating after a win at SMU: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)
