BYU Football Loses Again: Now What?

At the end of September, BYU was ranked 18^th in the country, 4-0 and we were all sitting around our homes thinking of how we would find a way to scrape up the money to buy tickets to the Fiesta Bowl in January. At the end of October, BYU is unranked, 4-4 and we are all sitting around counting down the days until basketball season.

There are a few undeniable facts surrounding the BYU football team right now. These are indisputable.

The defensive secondary was lauded as the best secondary in BYU history and they anointed themselves with the name “No Fly Zone” to themselves during Fall Camp.
Go Fast, Go Hard and Go Long was mentioned by the coaches on several occasions during the preseason as they expected to bring back the deep ball with their wide receivers.
The schedule was easier than last year. After BYU beat Texas, BYU was projected to be favored in every game remaining on their schedule. Bronco Mendenhall’s goal was at least 10 wins. That was the bottom line.
Taysom Hill was an All-American type athlete and he is injured and will not play football again this season.
A number of other players have been dinged up along the way, including names like Bronson Kaufusi, Alani Fua, Craig Bills and Jamaal Williams.
BYU has lost four games in a row and has given up 30 or more points in every game since September 11. (Six)

So, now what?

The players haven’t changed since Fall Camp. Sure, there are some injuries but find me a team that is eight games into their football season that hasn’t had injuries along the way. The talented secondary is still there, the wide receivers are still there, the running backs and linebackers are still there. This team still has a lot of talent.

The coaches haven’t changed. Nobody is missing time due to illness, nobody has been fired or replaced and no new coaches have been brought in. This is the same staff that worked with the team last year and the same staff that was there for Fall Camp. The staff knows these players and the players know this staff.

For the most part, everything about this team is the same as it was in Fall Camp and at the end of September. Taysom Hill is out for the year, but beyond that, the team is there. Hill was and is an incredible player, but was he really the lynch pin between 12-0 and 0-12? BYU has yet to win a game without him.

Recently, I got a new job in the fraud prevention/banking industry. (Wait, blogging isn’t my career? Whaaaaat?) At this new job, I was doing the same thing that I had been doing at my previous job. In fact, my job title actually remained the same. I had worked in my previous position for about three years. No matter what situation came up, I had the confidence and ability to resolve the problem quickly and efficiently. I knew exactly what I was doing on a daily basis.

Oct 24, 2014; Boise, ID, USA; Brigham Young Cougars quarterback Christian Stewart (7) throws the ball during the second half against the Boise State Broncos at Albertsons Stadium. The Broncos won 55-20. Mandatory Credit: Brian Losness-USA TODAY Sports

As I walked into my new office and took a seat behind my new desk it looked very familiar. I still had a chair, I still had dual computer monitors and it was still a cubicle inside a big office. Microsoft Excel spreadsheets looked the same and it was the same process for me to open up my emails. With the exception of the badge on my belt and the location of my office, much of my job was the same as it had been before.

A few days into my new job, a situation rose up where someone was trying to commit fraud. I could see the red flags and I recognized what was happening, but I had no idea what to do. I had been in similar situations hundreds of times over the previous three years. My surroundings were the same as they had been before, but I panicked and was unsure what to do. The vocabulary that I was supposed to use was different, the way I reported the situation to bank officials was different, the operating system that I was using was different and the type of fraud that this person was trying to commit was different than I had seen before. On the surface, everything was the same, but, a few key differences made the entire situation feel foreign to me.

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Personally, I feel like BYU is going through the same kind of transition that I felt when I changed jobs. Football is still the same, the Y on their helmets is still the same, the players and coaches are still the same and it’s still the game they’ve all been playing for their entire lives. But a new quarterback and instantly everything that this team has known for the last two years is Plforeign to them.

Now, I figured it out. It took some time but eventually I learned all of the appropriate vocabulary, reports and operating systems but it wasn’t something I just figured out overnight. I had to change the way I did things, however. I couldn’t work the same way that I had for the previous three years because my new situation was different. I had to re-invent the way that I did my job.

BYU football needs to do the same.

How? Well, I don’t know the answer to that and that’s why I work in banking and not the football office. But something has got to change. Whether that means coaches need to change, players need to change, schemes or play calling needs to change or the way that the team eats dinner before a game needs to change, I don’t know. One thing I do know, though, is that something on this team needs to change. Not because they’re losing games, but because their personal situation changed when Taysom Hill went down. Now it’s time to figure out what you need to do to adapt, adapt and do something different than before.

This change may be something minor like playing one player 15 more reps than he’s been getting or this change may be something major like a new coach on staff. It may need to be a change in the way of thinking in the locker room or even just a change in the game day routine. Maybe the team needs to wear long gray t-shirts under their uniforms (that seemed to work before, right?) or they need to come up with some choreography for their pre-game stretches (and that worked for the dudes in Remember The Titans) or even just change their pre-game music. I don’t know what they need to do, but if they don’t do something it’s going to continue to be really ugly.

This team is still talented. These coaches are still smart men. The talent is still on this team. The football is still brown and Provo is still in Utah. But it’s time for our Cougars to re-invent themselves somehow and make a change.

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BYU Football Loses Again: So, Now What?

By Jeff Hansen | Oct 25, 2014