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BYU Football: Sitake isn’t on the hot seat, but it’s getting warm

By Shaun Gordon

(Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images)
(Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images) /
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BYU Football looks to bounce back from a miserable 4-9 season, and one magazine has Kalani Sitake on the hot seat heading into 2018.

Recently, Street & Smith released their 2018 College Football preview magazine. It’s packed with 208 pages of college football information, from preseason rankings to a breakdown of each team, including BYU.

In one of the articles, Sporting News’ Bill Bender created a number of lists, from Top 5 players at different positions, to Top 5 Impact Freshmen, to 5 Coaches on the Hot Seat.

BYU Head Coach Kalani Sitake is on that last list.

In Bender’s mind, and likely in the mind of many other writers and fans, Sitake needs to right the ship this season if he wants to keep his job.

As Bender wrote:

"“The Cougars fell to 4-9 in their second season under Sitake, and that’s not the right look for a proud program trying to increase its profile to get into a Power Five conference. Brigham Young faces Arizona, Wisconsin, and Washington on the road in September, too.”"

None of that is untrue. In fact, it’s all perfectly true.

But it doesn’t add up to BYU’s head coach being one of the five most tenuous positions in college football this season.

Yes, the Cougars are coming off an abysmal 4-9 season. BYU was a bad team, especially on the offensive side of the football. Double-digit losses to Eastern Carolina and Utah State aren’t acceptable by BYU’s standards, nor is a home loss to UMass.

That’s why coaches lost their jobs. All but one offense coach is gone. On the other side of the ball, Steve Kaufusi retired and the defensive staff shuffled assignments.

But Kalani Sitake is still there. One bad season wasn’t enough to prompt Tom Holmoe to fire the head guy, and Sitake has been allowed a second chance at creating a coaching staff that can win.

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There are only two realistic ways that Sitake won’t have his job in 2019:

  • If there is NO improvement over last year, either in performance or results.
  • If the team performs worse than last year.

Should one of those two things happen, Sitake will probably be fired, and rightfully so. That’s why his coaching seat is warm.

But neither of those two things will likely happen. That’s why his coaching seat isn’t hot.

The Cougars couldn’t have a softer home schedule. Five of the six games at LaVell Edwards Stadium should be BYU wins (McNeese State, Utah State, Hawaii, Northern Illinois, New Mexico State), and the sixth isn’t an impossible-to-win contest (Cal).

If BYU simply wins the home games they should win, then the Cougars have shown improvement. Five wins would likely be enough to give Sitake another year. The fans will be left wanting more, but he’ll get one more shot to give them more.

This is college football, though, and anything can happen. BYU could lose a handful of games they shouldn’t lose. It happened last year.

Sitake’s job is far from secure, but it’s premature to consider him on the hot seat as of now.

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